PHPUnit, Using class consts to change State

Question

I'm learning Zend and also PHPUnit.

Here is what I have below

public function changeToIllegalState()
{
    return array(
        array( Application_Model_SomeModel::FAIL ),
        array( Application_Model_SomeModel::SUCCESS )
    );
}

/**
 * @dataProvider changeToIllegalState
 * @expectedException IllegalStateChangeException
 */

public function testIllegalStateChangeGeneratesException( $state )
{
    $mapper = new Application_Model_Mapper_SomeModel();
    $model = new Application_Model_SomeModel();

    $model->changeState( $state );

    $mapper->save( $model );

}

So as you can see here, the data provider provides some constants that represent different states from the model.

PHPUnit says that it can't find the Model class in the dataprovider method. However, if I try to use the constants within the test methods, it all works and there are no problems. I'm using the Zend autoloader to load my classes and it has all been dandy up till now. I know that I could just put in the values for the constants themselves, but I don't know why I'm getting this error.

I can only assume that the dataprovider methods are called before the setup method is called because I do all the autoloading business in the setup method.

EDIT :

I have also tried the following but it still won't work with the class consts.

protected $_FAIL;
protected $_model;

public function setUp()
{
    parent::setUp();
    $this->_model = new Application_Model_SomeModel();
    $this->_FAIL = Application_Model_SomeModel::FAIL;
}

Now, when I try to use $_FAIL in the provider method I get a NULL value instead of the 'fail' string that I'm expecting. This is really weird.

Answer 1

PHPUnit instantiates all of test cases that will be run before running any tests.

• One per test method without a data provider.
• One per data provider method.
• One per parameter array returned from each data provider, so a provider that returns an array of four arrays gets four test case instances.

Assuming you're setting up the autoloader in your bootstrap.php, it should load the class containing those constants. However, I would try a test to see:

public function changeToIllegalState()
{
    require_once 'Zend/Loader/Autoloader';
    Zend_Loader_Autoloader::getInstance();

    return array(
        array( Application_Model_SomeModel::FAIL ),
        array( Application_Model_SomeModel::SUCCESS )
    );
}

Or is Zend Framework adding the models' directory to the include path in one of the test case's setUp() method instead?