How to separate TestCases by used storage? - php

Question

I have a test for testing data model:
<?php
namespace Tests\Model\SQL;
/**
* #group Model_Users
* #group Model
*/
class UsersTest extends TestCase {
/** #var Users */
private $model;
public function setUp() {
parent::setUp();
$this->connection->execute( file_get_contents(
__DIR__ . '/fixtures/countries.sql' ) );
$this->model = new \Users(
$this->connection
);
}
public function testUserExists() {
$exists = $this->model->userExists( 'johndoe' );
$this->assertTrue( $exists );
}
}
The Tests\Model\SQL\TestCase uses SQLite as a database to keep tests as fast as possible.
Anyway, as you may expect, SQLite is not the same database as Postgres, therefore there could be some specialites, which will fail on SQLite and pass on PostgreSQL and vice versa.
My question is:
How to effectively (when keeping DRY in mind) design the architecture to be able to run tests only with SQLite and then only with Postgres.
When I am saying DRY, I mean ideally case, when I write only one testcase for one model and the architecture of my tests will take care of that, so I will be able to run tests like this:
php tests/run.php --group=MockedDbWithSqlite # fast way, prefered, default
php tests/run.php --group=RealDb # slower way, but with more precise results

Answer 1

So judging from the comment the issue is rather independent of any concrete storage issue and more about how one can pass a custom parameter to PHPUnit.
Because, using this parameter, you'd switch out DB drivers.
There are a couple of options to do this but no officially supported "custom parameters" objects or something. Even so it would be nice if someone would add this maybe :)
My suggestion would be to use one of the following to options:
Env variables
Make the test/bootstrap code rely on $_ENV variables.
$dbDriverFactory->getInstanceFor(getenv('DB'));
and using one of the ways below to
export DB=postgress
phpunit
or
DB=postpress; phpunit;
or using phpunits xml config to set the env or whatever you like.
By doing so you could provide two xml configs phpunit-sqlite.xml & phpunit-pg.xml and run:
phpunit -c phpunit-sqlite.xml
It doesn't have to be env. Any of the methods listed in the doc section Setting PHP INI settings, Constants and Global Variables will work.
"Custom" cli parameters
Calling phpunit like this:
phpunit --colors --usePostgres
and adding something like this in test cases or bootstrap code:
if (in_array('--usePostgress', $_SERVER['argv'], true) {
$db = $this->setupPG();
} else {
$db = $this->setupSqlite();
}

Answer 2

I read this differently to edorian. I like to use inheritance for this kind of thing. The advantage is you can run both SQLite and Postgres tests in the same test run. The disadvantage is you have to add some code to each test file where you want to run with both databases. And you have to repeat this for each new database you want to test. Here is how it works:
class UsersTestBase extends TestCase {
//Unchanged
}
class UsersTestSQLite extends UsersTestBase{}
class UsersTestPostgres extends UsersTestBase {
function __construct(){
parent::_construct("postgres");
}
}
So, UsersTest is exactly the same, except the name has changed to append "Base".
You then have a derived UsersTestSQLite class. This does nothing. At this point we've not gained or lost anything.
Then we had UsersTestPostgres. This somehow tells the object to use postgres instead of sqlite. In this case I've assumed TestCase has a constructor that can take the database to use as an optional parameter (with the default being "sqlite"). Obviously there are lots of alternatives to that, but I hope you see the general idea.
Finally you need to add the suitable #group tags to the derived classes, to allow you control over when they are run.