Question

I have a testclass in which one test runs multiple times via a @dataProvider and another test that @depends on the first method. However, when I called var_dump on what should be passed to the second test, it gives me a solid NULL, which I didn’t expect.

In other words: what should this do:

<?php 
class DevicesTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
    /**
     * @dataProvider registerDataProvider
     */
    public function testRegister($device, $supposedResult)
    {
        //do a bunch of tests
        return array($device, $supposedResult);
    }

    public function registerDataProvider()
    {
        return array(array("foo", "foo"));
    }

    /**
     * @depends testRegister
     */
    public function testSaveDevicePreferences($deviceArr)
    {
        $this->assertNotEmpty($deviceArr);
    }
}
?>

Answer 1

Normally @dataProvider is used when you want to run a test multiple times with different data sets for each. It exists to save you from writing looping code in the test and to allow different data sets to pass or fail individually.

As I said in my comments, I believe that PHPUnit will use either @depends or @dataProvider, and from your example my guess is that the second wins out. Another possibility is that tests with data providers cannot be used as dependencies because PHPUnit doesn’t know which test-plus-dataset to pick.

Since registerDataProvider returns a single data set, you could just as easily call it from the test itself. This would allow @depends to work in the second test without the @dataProvider. Assuming that testRegister needs to modify $device and/or $supposedResult, this should work:

class DevicesTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {
    public function testRegister() {
        list($device, $supposedResult) = $this->registerDataProvider();
        //do a bunch of tests
        //register a device in the DB
        return array($device, $supposedResult);
    }

    public function registerDataProvider() {
        return array("foo", "foo");
    }

    /**
     * @depends testRegister
     */
    public function testSaveDevicePreferences($data) {
        list($device, $supposedResult) = $data;
        // do stuff dependent on testRegister()
        $this->assertEquals($device, $supposedResult);
    }
}

If those variables don’t need to be modified by the first test, you can simply call registerDataProvider from both tests. Note that PHPUnit will not separate a returned array from a dependend upon test into arguments to the dependent test as the data provider mechanism does. This is because it doesn’t know that the array being returned is multiple arguments versus a single argument.