Question

I have a class that access web services. It can optionally cache results. So I want to write two test classes. The first one (Ws_Test) runs tests without caching. The second one (WsCached_Test) extends the first and runs the same tests but with cache enabled.

In theory that solves my problem, but when I run ‘all tests’ only the second test class (WsCached_Test) is run. Seems like PHPUnit assumes the class has already been completely tested when WsCached_Test is run.

class Ws_Test extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    public function setUp()
    {
        $this->ws = new Ws();
    }

    // lots of tests
}

class WsCached_Test extends Ws_Test
{
    public function setUp()
    {
        $this->ws = new Ws();
        $this->ws->setCacheResults(true);
    }

    // inherits lots of tests
}

Answer 1

I don’t know if this will solve the problem, but my first attempt at a fix would be to make the base class abstract and have two subclasses: WsCached_Test and WsUncached_Test.

abstract class BaseWsTester extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    public function setUp()
    {
        $this->ws = new Ws();
    }

    // lots of tests
}

class WsUncached_Test extends BaseWsTester
{
    // inherits lots of tests
}

class WsCached_Test extends BaseWsTester
{
    public function setUp()
    {
        parent::setUp();
        $this->ws->setCacheResults(true);
    }

    // inherits lots of tests
}

The name BaseWsTester is chosen to keep PHPUnit from thinking it’s a test case to be run, and its abstractness should help. If this doesn’t work, move setUp() down into each subclass and remove it from the base class.