CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpphpunit
Emanuil Rusev
Emanuil Rusev

Reputation: 35255

Dependencies between PHPUnit tests

I'm writing a PHPUnit test case for an API (so not exactly a unit test) and I'm thinking about having a test that all other tests will depend on.

The tests in the test case make API requests. Most of these requests require a user. The test in question will create that user that the other tests will use.

Would that be a horrible idea?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 638

Answers (1)

Dan Bizdadea
Dan Bizdadea

Reputation: 1302

I think that the best way for unit tests is to eliminate the dependencies first.

  1. You can abstract the end point with your own local version that will return predictible results. This way you can test that your requests are correct.

  2. You can abstract the data providers (database, filesitem, etc...) with your stubs that will also return predictible data (username, etc..).

After that you just test your request and see they are correct..

The second part is to actualy test the data providers, with different tests, so you know that the good username will be given.

And then you can test the API connectivity, etc..

EDIT. If you have dependencies in your code, and it's difficult to abstract the providers or the end point web service, you may need to adjust your code so that it will accept references to those objects as parameters. Than in your tests you change the objects passed with your own stub objects. In production you pass the correct references, so that you will not need to change your code for testing.

I hope i have been clear. If not, ask me and i can explain better, maybe i did not understand your question well

Upvotes: 3

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