PHPUnit/DBUnit Handle Timestamp Column

Question

I am trying to use PHPUnit/DBUnit to test my Zend Framework DbTable models. I am getting tripped up with tables that have a timestamp.

I am trying to use assertDataSetsEqual to compare an the actual results of an insert to the expected results. Of course, when I insert a record into a table with a timestamp, the timestamp field get populated with the current date/time. The dataset that represents the expected data is static so the timestamp won't match.

How can I handle this situation? Can I make the assertion ignore the timestamp column?

Answer 1

I just found a much better solution to this thanks to this blog post.

I created a function to allow me to easily assert my two datasets are equal.

protected function assertDataSetEquals(
        $ExpectedXMLFileName,
        array $options = array()) {

    $model  = (isset($options['model'])) ?
        $options['model'] :
        $this->_object;
    $excludeColumns = (isset($options['excludeColumns'])) ?
        $options['excludeColumns'] :
        null;

    $ds = new Zend_Test_PHPUnit_Db_DataSet_DbTableDataSet();
    $ds->addTable($model);

    $dsFiltered = (isset($excludeColumns)) ?
        $this->filterColumns($model, $ds, $excludeColumns) :
        $ds;

    $this->assertDataSetsEqual(
        $this->createFlatXmlDataSet(
            APPLICATION_PATH 
            . '/../tests/fixtures/models/'
                . $ExpectedXMLFileName . '.xml'
        ),
        $dsFiltered
    );
}

And a private function to return the filtered dataset.

private function filterColumns(
        $model,
        $dataSet,
        $excludeColumns) {

    $dsFiltered = 
        new PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_DataSet_DataSetFilter($dataSet);
    $dsFiltered->setExcludeColumnsForTable(
            $model->getName(),
            $excludeColumns
        );

    return $dsFiltered;
}

Now to compare two datasets while excluding any columns I just do this.

    $this->assertDataSetEquals(
            'TableWithTimestampIWantToIgnoreUpdate',
            array('excludeColumns'=>array('timestamp','id'))
        );

This makes for a much easier/cleaner way to test models that correspond to tables with a timestamp column.