What is the difference between setup() in PHPUnit and _before in Codeception

Question

I am learning Codeception and I wonder when I should use setUp() or tearDown() and when I should use _before() or _after(). I don't see no difference. Both methods are run before or after a single test in my testfile? Thanks,

Answer 1

As Gabriel Hemming has mentioned, setUp() and tearDown() are PHPUnit's way of setting up the environment before each test is run and tearing down the environment after each test is run. _before() and _after() is how codeception's way of doing this.

To answer your question, about why codeception has different set of methods for this let me refer you to codeception's documentation: http://codeception.com/docs/05-UnitTests#creating-test

As you see, unlike in PHPUnit, the setUp and tearDown methods are replaced with their aliases: _before, _after.

The actual setUp and tearDown are implemented by the parent class \Codeception\TestCase\Test and set the UnitTester class up to have all the cool actions from Cept-files to be run as a part of your unit tests.

The cool actions the docs are referring to are any modules or helper classes that can now be used in your unit test.

Here is a good example of how to use modules in your unit test: http://codeception.com/docs/05-UnitTests#using-modules

Let's have an example of setting up fixture data in a unit test:

<?php


class UserRepositoryTest extends \Codeception\Test\Unit
{
    /**
     * @var \UnitTester
     */
    protected $tester;

    protected function _before()
    {
        // Note that codeception will delete the record after the test.
        $this->tester->haveInDatabase('users', array('name' => 'miles', 'email' => 'miles@davis.com'));
    }

    protected function _after()
    {

    }

    // tests
    public function testUserAlreadyExists()
    {

        $userRepository = new UserRepository(
            new PDO(
                'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test;port=3306;charset=utf8',
                'testuser',
                'password'
            )
        );

        $user = new User();
        $user->name = 'another name';
        $user->email = 'miles@davis.com';

        $this->expectException(UserAlreadyExistsException::class);

        $user->save();

    }
}

class User
{
    public $name;
    public $email;

}

class UserRepository
{
    public function __construct(PDO $database)
    {
        $this->db = $database;
    }

    public function save(User $user)
    {
        try {
            $this->db->prepare('INSERT INTO `users` (`name`, `email`) VALUES (:name, :email)')
                ->execute(['name' => $user->name, 'email' => $user->email]);
        } catch (PDOException $e) {
            if ($e->getCode() == 1062) {
                throw new UserAlreadyExistsException();
            } else {
                throw $e;
            }
        }

    }
}