PHPUnit Manual

While creating tests for your software you may come across database code that needs to be unit tested. The database extension has been created to provide an easy way to place your database in a known state, execute your database-effecting code, and ensure that the expected data is found in the database.

The quickest way to create a new Database Unit Test is to extend the PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_TestCase class. This class provides the functionality to create a database connection, seed your database with data, and after executing a test comparing the contents of your database with a dataset that can be built in a variety of formats. In Example 9.1 you can see examples of getConnection() and getDataSet() implementations.

<?php
require_once 'PHPUnit/Extensions/Database/TestCase.php';
 
class DatabaseTest extends PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_TestCase
{
    protected function getConnection()
    {
        $pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=testdb', 'root', '');
        return $this->createDefaultDBConnection($pdo, 'testdb');
    }
 
    protected function getDataSet()
    {
        return $this->createFlatXMLDataSet(dirname(__FILE__).'/_files/bank-account-seed.xml');
    }
}
?>

The getConnection() method must return an implementation of the PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_DB_IDatabaseConnection interface. The createDefaultDBConnection() method can be used to return a database connection. It accepts a PDO object as the first parameter and the name of the schema you are testing against as the second parameter.

The getDataSet() method must return an implementation of the PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_DataSet_IDataSet interface. There are currently three different data sets available in PHPUnit. These datasets are discussed in the section called “Datasets”