socialengine/setup-test-db

Get efficient with seeding your database for tests in Laravel

Setup Test DB Command for Laravel

, _(*1)

Integration tests in laravel are great, but the common way to maintain the database is a giant time sink of re-seeding and re-migrating for every single test., _(*2)

This command and bootstrap file aims to remove the needless reseeding and migrating (since you're using transactions anyways, right?) for every test and instead gives your tests a "clean" migrated and seeded db., _(*3)

Works with sqlite and any others supported by Eloquent., _(*4)

Installation

Require this package in composer:, _(*5)

$ composer require socialengine/setup-test-db

After updating composer, add the ServiceProvider to the providers array in app/config/app.php., _(*6)

'SocialEngine\TestDbSetup\ServiceProvider',

Add a bootstrap/testing.php or copy from vendor/socialengine/setup-test-db/bootstrap/testing.php, _(*7)

<?php

// bootstrap/testing.php
$testEnv = (getenv('APP_ENV')) ? : 'testing';

passthru("php " . __DIR__ . "/../artisan db:seed-test --env={$testEnv}");

require __DIR__ . '/autoload.php';

Change your phpunit (or any other framework) bootstrap file from bootstrap/autoload.php to bootstrap/testing.php:, _(*8)

<phpunit backupGlobals="false"
         backupStaticAttributes="false"
         bootstrap="./bootstrap/testing.php"
         colors="true"
         convertErrorsToExceptions="true"
         convertNoticesToExceptions="true"
         convertWarningsToExceptions="true"
         processIsolation="false"
         stopOnFailure="false"
         syntaxCheck="false"
>

Remove all the migration stuff from your TestCase.php, _(*9)

Finally, run your tests in 1/3 the time they used to., _(*10)

You can also publish the config-file to change seeder class used and enable truncation., _(*11)

$ php artisan config:publish socialengine/setup-test-db

Further reading and inspiration

Most of this is based on the work outlined by Chris Duell in his Speeding up PHP unit tests 15 times blog post:, _(*12)

An app I’m currently working on has less that 50% code coverage, and the tests took over 35 seconds to complete., _(*13)

It was enough for me to no longer bother consistently running tests, which almost defeats the purpose of self testing code. Until I got fed up enough to spend the time on speeding up the tests, by fifteen times (and almost halving memory usage)., _(*14)

License

MIT, _(*15)