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Tip #5: Secure Area

Problem: test cases extending EcomDev_PhpUnit_Test_Case_Controller with customer fixture fail with Cannot complete this operation from non-admin area because Magento is in area=frontend mode during tearDown and does not allow deletion of customers. The same problem occurs when you try to delete customers in a test outside of an adminhtml context.

The customer model checks if the isSecureArea flag is set in the Magento registry, so to solve the problem, we set this flag in the test. There are two possible ways to do it:

1.) If you create and delete customers within the test:

/*
 * @test
 * @registry isSecureArea
 */
public function testThatNeedsToDeleteCustomers()
{
    Mage::register('isSecureArea', true);
    // ...
}

(note the @registry annotation which will reset the flag afterwards, see Tip #1)

2.) If you use a customer fixture:

protected function setUp()
{
    Mage::register('isSecureArea', true);
    parent::setUp();
}
protected function tearDown()
{
    parent::tearDown();
    Mage::unregister('isSecureArea');
}

or if you use class wide fixtures:

    public static function setUpBeforeClass()
    {
        Mage::register('isSecureArea', true);
    }
    public static function tearDownAfterClass()
    {
        Mage::unregister('isSecureArea');
    }

Tip #4: Named Parameters

The advantage of YAML files for configuration is supposed to be easy readability. But if a data provider looks like this, there’s not so much readability left:

-
  - 7
  - 1
  -
    5: 7
    6: 9
-
  - 7
  - 1
  -
    5: 8
    6: 10

Technically the same, but way more maintainable:

Bundle_X_A1_B2:
  product_id: 7
  qty: 1
  bundle_selections_by_option:
    5: 7
    6: 9
Bundle_X_A2_B2:
  product_id: 7
  qty: 1
  bundle_selections_by_option:
    5: 8
    6: 10

You can at least guess, that this one is about adding bundle products to the cart, and if you know it, the test data is easy to understand, without having to look at the source code.

Another positive effect is, that for failed tests PHPUnit doesn’t show messages like TestCase::test() with data set #1 anymore, but for example TestCase::test() with data set "Bundle_X_A1_B2"

Tip #3 Shared Data Providers

Did you ever wonder, why you can specify the file name for expectations and fixtures, but for data providers you seem to be limited to the default “test name dot yaml”? The simple reason is, @dataProvider is a native feature of PHPUnit and its parameter actually must be a method name.

So @dataProvider dataProvider means, the method EcomDev_PHPUnit_Test_Case::dataProvider() is used as data provider:

    /**
     * Implements default data provider functionality,
     * returns array data loaded from Yaml file with the same name as test method
     *
     * @param string $testName
     * @return array
     */
    public function dataProvider($testName)
    {
        return TestUtil::dataProvider(get_called_class(), $testName);
    }

But EcomDev_PHPUnit also has a way to specify the file name for the data provider explicitly, thus allows shared providers:

/**
 * @dataProvider dataProvider
 * @dataProviderFile customFileName.yaml
 */
public function testSomething($something)

Tip #2: Expectation Keys

This is a short one: expected('works %s sprintf', 'like').

Which expectations should be loaded, usually depends on input data, so if your expectation file looks like this:

- product-1-qty-10:
  - answer: 42
- product-2-qty-10:
  - answer: 42

you can load it in the test like this:

/**
 * @test
 * @loadExpectation
 * @loadFixture
 * @dataProvider dataProvider
 */
public function testSomething($productId, $qty)
{
  $expectedAnswer = $this->expected('product-%s-qty-%s', $productId, $qty);
}