Question

I am trying to test a plugin model in a CakePHP app. The model uses a table called ‘cron_jobs’ for which I have set up this fixture:

class CronJobFixture extends CakeTestFixture
{
    public $import = array('table' => 'cron_jobs');
}

My test class works well and looks like this:

<?php

App::uses('CronJob', 'Cron.Model');

class CronJobTest extends CakeTestCase
{

    public $fixtures = array('plugin.cron.CronJob');

    public function setUp()
    {
        parent::setUp();
        $this->CronJob = new CronJob();
    }

    public function testCollectFailsOnMissingComponent()
    {
        $this->setExpectedException('InvalidArgumentException');
        $this->CronJob->collect(null);
    }

    public function testCollectSilentOnMissingComponent()
    {
        $result = $this->CronJob->collect('SomeNonExistingComponent');
        $this->assertEquals(null, $result);
    }

    // Some more tests that will need the fixture ....
}

If I then change the test setup by replacing

$this->CronJob = new CronJob();

with

$this->CronJob = ClassRegistry::init("CronJob");

to load the fixture, I get this error:

CronJobTest::testCollectSilentOnMissingComponent PDOException:
SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an
error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your
MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘collect’ at
line 1

The error can’t be generated by anything in the CronJob class, because the code being covered by the two tests doesn’t access the database. I am sure my test database is configured correctly, because I get a database connection error if I make changes to the test database configuration.

I am using CakePHP 2.2.1, PHPUnit 3.6.12, PHP 5.4

Answer 1

Fixtures prefer the lowercase underscored convention. Do this:

public $fixtures = array('plugin.cron.cron_job');

Since it’s a plugin; be sure to use the plugin notation with ClassRegistry::init like this:

$this->CronJob = ClassRegistry::init('Cron.CronJob');

That error happens because CakePHP is lazy loading a non-plugin CronJob model without your collect() method.