How to set a value to $_SERVER['var'] on a functional testing?

Question

I have an action to make an 'autologin' based in a id that the system gets from $_SERVER['AUTH_USER']. In my business server that value is always set for authenticated user. Now, I am trying test my autologin (and so many other things that depends the autologin to work) so I need to set some user to that global (just a string).

What I tryed

$_SERVER['AUTH_USER'] = 'someUser';
$I->amOnPage('some-route'); // this page redirects to autologin action where $_SERVER is used to get the user logged.

But when the action autologin is loaded that value is no more inside $_SERVER global and my test crashes.

What I would like to know

Where or how I can set that global value so that my page could behave normally, reading the value and just going on.

I will appreciate any help. Thank you.

Answer 1

It looks like lack of proper abstraction. You should avoid accessing $_SERVER['AUTH_USER'] directly in your app and do it in at most in one place - in component which will provide abstraction for this. So you should probably extend yii\web\Request and add related method for $_SERVER['AUTH_USER'] abstraction:

class MyRequest extends \yii\web\Request {

    private $_myAuthUser;

    public function getMyAuthUser() {
        if ($this->_myAuthUser === null) {
            $this->_myAuthUser = $_SERVER['AUTH_USER'];
        }

        return $this->_myAuthUser;
    }

    public function setMyAuthUser($value) {
        $this->_myAuthUser = $value;
    }
}

Use new class in your config:

return [
    'id' => 'app-web',
    // ...
    'components' => [
        'request' => [
            'class' => MyRequest::class,
        ],
        // ...
    ],
];

And use abstraction in your action:

$authUser = explode('\\', Yii::$app->request->getMyAuthUser())[0];

---

In your tests you can set value using setter in MyRequest:

 Yii::$app->request->setMyAuthUser('domain\x12345');

Or configure this at config level:

return [
    'id' => 'app-test',
    // ...
    'components' => [
        'request' => [
            'class' => MyRequest::class,
            'myAuthUser' => 'domain\x12345',
        ],
        // ...
    ],
];

---

UPDATE:

According to slinstj comments, Codeception may loose state of request component, including myAuthUser value. In that case it may be a good idea to implement getMyAuthUser() and setMyAuthUser() on different component (for example Yii::$app->user) or create separate component for that:

return [
    'id' => 'app-web',
    // ...
    'components' => [
        'authRequest' => [
            'class' => MyRequest::class,
        ],
        // ...
    ],
];