Testing¶

Installing SimpleTest¶

Installing SimpleTest

The testing framework provided with CakePHP 1.3 is built upon the SimpleTest testing framework. SimpleTest is not shipped with the default CakePHP installation, so we need to download it first. You can find it here: https://simpletest.sourceforge.net/.

Fetch the latest version, and unzip the code to your vendors folder, or your app/vendors folder, depending on your preference. You should now have a vendors/simpletest directory with all SimpleTest files and folders inside. Remember to have a DEBUG level of at least 1 in your app/config/core.php file before running any tests!

There is a new version of SimpleTest 1.1alpha that does not work with CakePHP. Please use 1.0.1.

If you have no test database connection defined in your app/config/database.php, test tables will be created with a test_suite_ prefix. You can create a $test database connection to contain any test tables like the one below:

var $test = array(
    'driver' => 'mysql',
    'persistent' => false,
    'host' => 'dbhost',
    'login' => 'dblogin',
    'password' => 'dbpassword',
    'database' => 'databaseName'
);

If the test database is available and CakePHP can connect to it, all tables will be created in this database.

Running Core test cases¶

After installing Simpletest, you can run the core test cases. They are part of every packaged release and can also be found in the git repository.

The tests can then be accessed by browsing to http://your.cake.domain/test.php (https://path-to-app/app/webroot/test.php if mod_rewrite is disabled) - depending on how your specific setup looks. Try executing one of the core test groups by clicking on the corresponding link. Executing a test group might take a while, but you should eventually see something like “2/2 test cases complete: 49 passes, 0 fails and 0 exceptions.”.

Congratulations, you are now ready to start writing tests!

If you run all of the core tests at once or run core test groups most of them will fail. This is known by the CakePHP developers and is normal so don’t panic. Instead, try running each of the core test cases individually.

About fixtures¶

When testing code that depends on models and data, one can use fixtures as a way to generate temporary data tables loaded with sample data that can be used by the test. The benefit of using fixtures is that your test has no chance of disrupting live application data. In addition, you can begin testing your code prior to actually developing live content for an application.

CakePHP attempts to use the connection named $test in your app/config/database.php configuration file. If this connection is not usable, it will use the $default database configuration and create the test tables in the database defined in that configuration. If the default connection is used, the test suite will use “test_suite_” as a prefix to help prevent collision with your existing tables.

CakePHP performs the following during the course of a fixture based test case:

1. Creates tables for each of the fixtures needed

2. Populates tables with data, if data is provided in fixture

3. Runs test methods

4. Empties the fixture tables

5. Removes fixture tables from database

Creating fixtures¶

When creating a fixture you will mainly define two things: how the table is created (which fields are part of the table), and which records will be initially populated to the test table. Let’s then create our first fixture, that will be used to test our own Article model. Create a file named article_fixture.php in your app/tests/fixtures directory, with the following content:

<?php
 class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
      var $name = 'Article';

      var $fields = array(
          'id' => array('type' => 'integer', 'key' => 'primary'),
          'title' => array('type' => 'string', 'length' => 255, 'null' => false),
          'body' => 'text',
          'published' => array('type' => 'integer', 'default' => '0', 'null' => false),
          'created' => 'datetime',
          'updated' => 'datetime'
      );
      var $records = array(
          array ('id' => 1, 'title' => 'First Article', 'body' => 'First Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:39:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:41:31'),
          array ('id' => 2, 'title' => 'Second Article', 'body' => 'Second Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:41:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:43:31'),
          array ('id' => 3, 'title' => 'Third Article', 'body' => 'Third Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:43:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:45:31')
      );
 }
 ?>

The $name variable is extremely significant. If you omit it, cake will use the wrong table names when it sets up your test database, and you’ll get strange errors that are difficult to debug. If you use PHP 5.2, you might be used to writing model classes without $name, but you must remember to include it in your fixture files.

We use $fields to specify which fields will be part of this table, on how they are defined. The format used to define these fields is the same used in the function generateColumnSchema() defined on Cake’s database engine classes (for example, on file dbo_mysql.php.) Let’s see the available attributes a field can take and their meaning:

type

CakePHP internal data type. Currently supported: string (maps to VARCHAR), text (maps to TEXT), integer (maps to INT), float (maps to FLOAT), datetime (maps to DATETIME), timestamp (maps to TIMESTAMP), time (maps to TIME), date (maps to DATE), and binary (maps to BLOB)

key

set to primary to make the field AUTO_INCREMENT, and a PRIMARY KEY for the table.

length

set to the specific length the field should take.

null

set to either true (to allow NULLs) or false (to disallow NULLs)

default

default value the field takes.

We lastly can set a set of records that will be populated after the test table is created. The format is fairly straight forward and needs little further explanation. Just keep in mind that each record in the $records array must have a key for every field specified in the $fields array. If a field for a particular record needs to have a NULL value, just specify the value of that key as NULL.

Importing table information and records¶

Your application may have already working models with real data associated to them, and you might decide to test your model with that data. It would be then a duplicate effort to have to define the table definition and/or records on your fixtures. Fortunately, there’s a way for you to define that table definition and/or records for a particular fixture come from an existing model or an existing table. Let’s start with an example. Assuming you have a model named Article available in your application (that maps to a table named articles), change the example fixture given in the previous section (app/tests/fixtures/article_fixture.php) to:

<?php
  class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
         var $name = 'Article';
         var $import = 'Article';
  }

This statement tells the test suite to import your table definition from the table linked to the model called Article. You can use any model available in your application. The statement above does not import records, you can do so by changing it to:

<?php
class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
    var $name = 'Article';
    var $import = array('model' => 'Article', 'records' => true);
}

If on the other hand you have a table created but no model available for it, you can specify that your import will take place by reading that table information instead. For example:

<?php
  class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
         var $name = 'Article';
         var $import = array('table' => 'articles');
  }
?>

Will import table definition from a table called ‘articles’ using your CakePHP database connection named ‘default’. If you want to change the connection to use just do:

<?php
  class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
  var $name = 'Article';
  var $import = array('table' => 'articles', 'connection' => 'other');
  }
  ?>

Since it uses your CakePHP database connection, if there’s any table prefix declared it will be automatically used when fetching table information. The two snippets above do not import records from the table. To force the fixture to also import its records, change it to:

<?php
  class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
         var $name = 'Article';
         var $import = array('table' => 'articles', 'records' => true);
  }
?>

You can naturally import your table definition from an existing model/table, but have your records defined directly on the fixture as it was shown on previous section. For example:

<?php
  class ArticleFixture extends CakeTestFixture {
         var $name = 'Article';
         var $import = 'Article';

         var $records = array(
             array ('id' => 1, 'title' => 'First Article', 'body' => 'First Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:39:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:41:31'),
             array ('id' => 2, 'title' => 'Second Article', 'body' => 'Second Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:41:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:43:31'),
             array ('id' => 3, 'title' => 'Third Article', 'body' => 'Third Article Body', 'published' => '1', 'created' => '2007-03-18 10:43:23', 'updated' => '2007-03-18 10:45:31')
         );
  }
?>

CakeTestCase Callback Methods¶

If you want to sneak in some logic just before or after an individual CakeTestCase method, and/or before or after your entire CakeTestCase, the following callbacks are available:

start()

First method called in a test case.

end()

Last method called in a test case.

startCase()

called before a test case is started.

endCase()

called after a test case has run.

before($method)

Announces the start of a test method.

after($method)

Announces the end of a test method.

startTest($method)

Called just before a test method is executed.

endTest($method)

Called just after a test method has completed.

Creating a test case¶

Let’s say we already have our Article model defined on app/models/article.php, which looks like this:

<?php
  class Article extends AppModel {
         var $name = 'Article';

         function published($fields = null) {
             $params = array(
                   'conditions' => array(
                         $this->name . '.published' => 1
                   ),
                   'fields' => $fields
             );

             return $this->find('all',$params);
         }

  }
?>

We now want to set up a test that will use this model definition, but through fixtures, to test some functionality in the model. CakePHP test suite loads a very minimum set of files (to keep tests isolated), so we have to start by loading our parent model (in this case the Article model which we already defined), and then inform the test suite that we want to test this model by specifying which DB configuration it should use. CakePHP test suite enables a DB configuration named test_suite that is used for all models that rely on fixtures. Setting $useDbConfig to this configuration will let CakePHP know that this model uses the test suite database connection.

CakePHP Models will only use the test_suite DB config if they rely on fixtures in your testcase!

Since we also want to reuse all our existing model code we will create a test model that will extend from Article, set $useDbConfig and $name appropiately. Let’s now create a file named article.test.php in your app/tests/cases/models directory, with the following contents:

<?php
  App::import('Model','Article');


  class ArticleTestCase extends CakeTestCase {
         var $fixtures = array( 'app.article' );
  }
?>

We have created the ArticleTestCase. In variable $fixtures we define the set of fixtures that we’ll use.

If your model is associated with other models, you will need to include ALL the fixtures for each associated model even if you don’t use them. For example: A hasMany B hasMany C hasMany D. In ATestCase you will have to include fixtures for a, b, c and d.

Creating a test method¶

Let’s now add a method to test the function published() in the Article model. Edit the file app/tests/cases/models/article.test.php so it now looks like this:

<?php
  App::import('Model', 'Article');

  class ArticleTestCase extends CakeTestCase {
      var $fixtures = array( 'app.article' );

      function testPublished() {
          $this->Article =& ClassRegistry::init('Article');

          $result = $this->Article->published(array('id', 'title'));
          $expected = array(
              array('Article' => array( 'id' => 1, 'title' => 'First Article' )),
              array('Article' => array( 'id' => 2, 'title' => 'Second Article' )),
              array('Article' => array( 'id' => 3, 'title' => 'Third Article' ))
          );

          $this->assertEqual($result, $expected);
      }
  }

You can see we have added a method called testPublished(). We start by creating an instance of our fixture based Article model, and then run our published() method. In $expected we set what we expect should be the proper result (that we know since we have defined which records are initally populated to the article table.) We test that the result equals our expectation by using the assertEqual method. See the section Creating Tests for information on how to run the test.

Creating a test case¶

Say you have a typical articles controller, with its corresponding model, and it looks like this:

<?php
class ArticlesController extends AppController {
   var $name = 'Articles';
   var $helpers = array('Ajax', 'Form', 'Html');

   function index($short = null) {
     if (!empty($this->data)) {
       $this->Article->save($this->data);
     }
     if (!empty($short)) {
       $result = $this->Article->findAll(null, array('id',
          'title'));
     } else {
       $result = $this->Article->findAll();
     }

     if (isset($this->params['requested'])) {
       return $result;
     }

     $this->set('title', 'Articles');
     $this->set('articles', $result);
   }
}
?>

Create a file named articles_controller.test.php in your app/tests/cases/controllers directory and put the following inside:

<?php
class ArticlesControllerTest extends CakeTestCase {
   function startCase() {
     echo '<h1>Starting Test Case</h1>';
   }
   function endCase() {
     echo '<h1>Ending Test Case</h1>';
   }
   function startTest($method) {
     echo '<h3>Starting method ' . $method . '</h3>';
   }
   function endTest($method) {
     echo '<hr />';
   }
   function testIndex() {
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index');
     debug($result);
   }
   function testIndexShort() {
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index/short');
     debug($result);
   }
   function testIndexShortGetRenderedHtml() {
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index/short',
     array('return' => 'render'));
     debug(htmlentities($result));
   }
   function testIndexShortGetViewVars() {
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index/short',
     array('return' => 'vars'));
     debug($result);
   }
   function testIndexFixturized() {
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index/short',
     array('fixturize' => true));
     debug($result);
   }
   function testIndexPostFixturized() {
     $data = array('Article' => array('user_id' => 1, 'published'
          => 1, 'slug'=>'new-article', 'title' => 'New Article', 'body' => 'New Body'));
     $result = $this->testAction('/articles/index',
     array('fixturize' => true, 'data' => $data, 'method' => 'post'));
     debug($result);
   }
}
?>

The testAction method¶

The new thing here is the testAction method. The first argument of that method is the Cake url of the controller action to be tested, as in ‘/articles/index/short’.

The second argument is an array of parameters, consisting of:

return

Set to what you want returned.

Valid values are:

• ‘vars’ - You get the view vars available after executing action

• ‘view’ - You get The rendered view, without the layout

• ‘contents’ - You get the rendered view’s complete html, including the layout

• ‘result’ - You get the returned value when action uses $this->params[‘requested’].

The default is ‘result’.

fixturize

Set to true if you want your models auto-fixturized (so your application tables get copied, along with their records, to test tables so if you change data it does not affect your real application.) If you set ‘fixturize’ to an array of models, then only those models will be auto-fixturized while the other will remain with live tables. If you wish to use your fixture files with testAction() do not use fixturize, and instead just use fixtures as you normally would.

method

set to ‘post’ or ‘get’ if you want to pass data to the controller

data

the data to be passed. Set it to be an associative array consisting of fields => value. Take a look at function testIndexPostFixturized() in above test case to see how we emulate posting form data for a new article submission.

Pitfalls¶

If you use testAction to test a method in a controller that does a redirect, your test will terminate immediately, not yielding any results. See https://mark-story.com/posts/view/testing-cakephp-controllers-the-hard-way for a possible fix.

Creating Helper test, part I¶

First of all we will define the responsibilities of our CurrencyRendererHelper. Basically, it will have two methods just for demonstration purpose:

function usd($amount)

This function will receive the amount to render. It will take 2 decimal digits filling empty space with zeros and prefix ‘USD’.

function euro($amount)

This function will do the same as usd() but prefix the output with ‘EUR’. Just to make it a bit more complex, we will also wrap the result in span tags:

<span class="euro"></span>

Let’s create the tests first:

<?php

//Import the helper to be tested.
//If the tested helper were using some other helper, like Html,
//it should be impoorted in this line, and instantialized in startTest().
App::import('Helper', 'CurrencyRenderer');

class CurrencyRendererTest extends CakeTestCase {
    private $currencyRenderer = null;

    //Here we instantiate our helper, and all other helpers we need.
    public function startTest() {
        $this->currencyRenderer = new CurrencyRendererHelper();
    }

    //testing usd() function.
    public function testUsd() {
        $this->assertEqual('USD 5.30', $this->currencyRenderer->usd(5.30));
        //We should always have 2 decimal digits.
        $this->assertEqual('USD 1.00', $this->currencyRenderer->usd(1));
        $this->assertEqual('USD 2.05', $this->currencyRenderer->usd(2.05));
        //Testing the thousands separator
        $this->assertEqual('USD 12,000.70', $this->currencyRenderer->usd(12000.70));
    }
}

Here, we call usd() with different parameters and tell the test suite to check if the returned values are equal to what is expected.

Executing the test now will result in errors (because currencyRendererHelper doesn’t even exist yet) showing that we have 3 fails.

Once we know what our method should do, we can write the method itself:

<?php
class CurrencyRendererHelper extends AppHelper {
    public function usd($amount) {
        return 'USD ' . number_format($amount, 2, '.', ',');
    }
}

Here we set the decimal places to 2, decimal separator to dot, thousands separator to comma, and prefix the formatted number with ‘USD’ string.

Save this in app/views/helpers/currency_renderer.php and execute the test. You should see a green bar and messaging indicating 4 passes.

Initializing the component¶

Since Components we need a controller to access the data in the model.

If the startup() function of the component looks like this:

public function startup(&$controller){
          $this->Transporter = $controller->Transporter;
 }

then we can just design a really simple fake class:

class FakeTransporterController {}

and assign values into it like this:

$this->TransporterComponentTest = new TransporterComponent();
$controller = new FakeTransporterController();
$controller->Transporter = new TransporterTest();
$this->TransporterComponentTest->startup(&$controller);

Creating a test method¶

Just create a class that extends CakeTestCase and start writing tests!

class TransporterTestCase extends CakeTestCase {
    var $fixtures = array('transporter');
    function testGetTransporter() {
          $this->TransporterComponentTest = new TransporterComponent();
          $controller = new FakeTransporterController();
          $controller->Transporter = new TransporterTest();
          $this->TransporterComponentTest->startup(&$controller);

          $result = $this->TransporterComponentTest->getTransporter("12345", "Sweden", "54321", "Sweden");
          $this->assertEqual($result, 1, "SP is best for 1xxxx-5xxxx");

          $result = $this->TransporterComponentTest->getTransporter("41234", "Sweden", "44321", "Sweden");
          $this->assertEqual($result, 2, "WSTS is best for 41xxx-44xxx");

          $result = $this->TransporterComponentTest->getTransporter("41001", "Sweden", "41870", "Sweden");
          $this->assertEqual($result, 3, "GL is best for 410xx-419xx");

          $result = $this->TransporterComponentTest->getTransporter("12345", "Sweden", "54321", "Norway");
          $this->assertEqual($result, 0, "Noone can service Norway");
   }
}

About CakeWebTestCase¶

CakeWebTestCase is a direct extension of the SimpleTest WebTestCase, without any extra functionality. All the functionality found in the SimpleTest documentation for Web testing is also available here. This also means that no functionality other than that of SimpleTest is available. This means that you cannot use fixtures, and all web test cases involving updating/saving to the database will permanently change your database values. Test results are often based on what values the database holds, so making sure the database contains the values you expect is part of the testing procedure.

Creating a test¶

In keeping with the other testing conventions, you should create your view tests in tests/cases/views. You can, of course, put those tests anywhere but following the conventions whenever possible is always a good idea. So let’s create the file tests/cases/views/complete_web.test.php

First, when you want to write web tests, you must remember to extend CakeWebTestCase instead of CakeTestCase:

class CompleteWebTestCase extends CakeWebTestCase

If you need to do some preparation before you start the test, create a constructor:

function CompleteWebTestCase(){
  //Do stuff here
}

When writing the actual test cases, the first thing you need to do is get some output to look at. This can be done by doing a get or post request, using get()or post() respectively. Both these methods take a full url as the first parameter. This can be dynamically fetched if we assume that the test script is located under http://your.domain/cake/folder/webroot/test.php by typing:

$this->baseurl = current(split("webroot", $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']));

You can then do gets and posts using Cake urls, like this:

$this->get($this->baseurl."/products/index/");
$this->post($this->baseurl."/customers/login", $data);

The second parameter to the post method, $data, is an associative array containing the post data in Cake format:

$data = array(
  "data[Customer][mail]" => "[email protected]",
  "data[Customer][password]" => "userpass");

When you have requested the page you can do all sorts of asserts on it, using standard SimpleTest web test methods.

Walking through a page¶

CakeWebTest also gives you an option to navigate through your page by clicking links or images, filling forms and clicking buttons. Please refer to the SimpleTest documentation for more information on that.

Customizing the test reporter¶

The standard test reporter is very minimalistic. If you want more shiny output to impress someone, fear not, it is actually very easy to extend. By creating a new reporter and making a request with a matching output GET parameter you can get test results with a custom reporter.

Reporters generate the visible output from the test suite. There are two built in reporters: Text and Html. By default all web requests use the Html reporter. You can create your own reporters by creating files in your app/libs. For example you could create the file app/libs/test_suite/reporters/my_reporter.php and in it create the following:

require_once CAKE_TEST_LIB . 'reporter' . DS . 'cake_base_reporter.php';

class MyReporter extends CakeBaseReporter {
    //methods go here.
}

Extending CakeBaseReporter or one of its subclasses is not required, but strongly suggested as you may get missing errors otherwise. CakeBaseReporter encapsulates a few common test suite features such as test case timing and code coverage report generation. You can use your custom reporter by setting the output query string parameter to the reporter name minus ‘reporter’. For the example above you would set output=my to use your custom reporter.

Test Reporter methods¶

Reporters have a number of methods used to generate the various parts of a Test suite response.

paintDocumentStart()

Paints the start of the response from the test suite. Used to paint things like head elements in an html page.

paintTestMenu()

Paints a menu of available test cases.

testCaseList()

Retrieves and paints the list of tests cases.

groupCaseList()

Retrieves and paints the list of group tests.

paintHeader()

Prints before the test case/group test is started.

paintPass()

Prints everytime a test case has passed. Use $this->getTestList() to get an array of information pertaining to the test, and $message to get the test result. Remember to call parent::paintPass($message).

paintFail()

Prints everytime a test case has failed. Remember to call parent::paintFail($message).

paintSkip()

Prints everytime a test case has been skipped. Remember to call parent::paintSkip($message).

paintException()

Prints everytime there is an uncaught exception. Remember to call parent::paintException($message). Prints everytime an error is raised. Remember to call parent::paintError($message).

paintFooter()

Prints when the test case/group test is over, i.e. when all test cases has been executed.

paintDocumentEnd()

Paints the end of the response from the test suite. Used to paint things like footer elements in an html page.

Grouping tests¶

If you want several of your test to run at the same time, you can try creating a test group. Create a file in /app/tests/groups/ and name it something like your_test_group_name.group.php. In this file, extend TestSuite and import test as follows:

<?php
class TryGroupTest extends TestSuite {
  var $label = 'try';
  function tryGroupTest() {
    TestManager::addTestCasesFromDirectory($this, APP_TEST_CASES . DS . 'models');
  }
}
?>

The code above will group all test cases found in the /app/tests/cases/models/ folder. To add an individual file, use TestManager::addTestFile($this, filename).