Have setup method run only once - php

Question

I have:
1. IntegrationTestCase extends TestCase
2. UnitTestCase extends TestCase
3. AcceptanceTestCase extends TestCase
In these I have quite a lot of non-static methods which are used in a lot of tests. All of my Test classes extend one of these 3 classes.
Now in a lot of Test classes I have a setUp method which preps the data and services needed and assigns them to class variables:
class SomeTestClass extends IntegrationTestCase
{
private $foo;
public function setUp()
{
parent::setUp();
$bar = $this->createBar(...);
$this->foo = new Foo($bar);
}
public function testA() { $this->foo...; }
public function testB() { $this->foo...; }
}
Problem is setUp is ran for each test defeating what I wanted to do and if what setUp method does takes a long time this is multiplied by the number of test methods.
Using public function __construct(...) { parent::__construct(..); ... } creates a problem because now lower level methods and classes from Laravel are not available.

Answer 1

For the next person running into this issue:
I had the problem that I wanted to migrate the database before running my tests but I didn't want the database to be migrated after each single test because the execution time would be way too high.
The solution for me was using a static property to check if the database was already migrated:
class SolutionTest extends TestCase
{
protected static $wasSetup = false;
protected function setUp()
{
parent::setUp();
if ( ! static::$wasSetup) {
$this->artisan('doctrine:schema:drop', [
'--force' => true
]);
$this->artisan('doctrine:schema:create');
static::$wasSetup = true;
}
}
}

Answer 2

Solution given by Saman Hosseini and similar didn't workout for me. Using the static property to flag getting reset for the next test class.
To overcome this I've wrote separate test class to test the test database connection & initialize the test database for once & made sure this runs before all the other tests
<?php
namespace Tests\Unit;
use Tests\TestCase;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan;
/**
* #runTestsInSeparateProcesses
*/
class DatabaseConnectionTest extends TestCase
{
/**
* Test the database connection
*
* #return void
*/
public function testDatabaseConnection()
{
$pdo = DB::connection()->getPdo();
$this->assertNotNull($pdo);
}
/**
* Initialize the test database for once
*
* #return void
*/
public function testInititializeTestDatabase()
{
Artisan::call('migrate:fresh');
Artisan::call('db:seed');
}
}

Answer 3

I recommend using the template methods called setUpBeforeClass and tearDownAfterClass
The setUpBeforeClass() method is called before the first test is executed and the tearDownAfterClass() method is called after last test is executed.
We use these two methods to share settings with all the tests.
For example, it is wise to get the database connection once in the setUpBeforeClass() method then get connection multiple times in the setUp() method.
And likewise, it is wise to close the database connection only once in the tearDownAfterClass() method then close the database connection after every test in the tearDown() method.

Answer 4

I am not sure what issues you see for setUpBeforeClass is static except for the one mentioned by Mark Baker. I assume you do know what you are doing, though. Here is a sample of possible usage.
class BeforeAllTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
private static $staticService;
private $service; // just to use $this is tests
public static function setUpBeforeClass() {
self::createService();
}
public static function createService(){
self::$staticService = 'some service';
}
/**
* just to use $this is tests
*/
public function setUp(){
$this->service = self::$staticService;
}
public function testService(){
$this->assertSame('some service', $this->service);
}
}
UPDATE: just somewhat similar approach you can see at https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/database.html (search for 'Tip: Use your own Abstract Database TestCase'). I am sure you are already using it since you are doing intensive db testing. But nobody restricts this way for db-issues only.
UPDATE2: well, I guess you would have to use smth like self::createService instead of $this->createService (I've updated the code above).