How to migrate a testing database in Laravel 5?

I have found a workaround for this.

In your config/database.php bellow mysql add:

        'mysql_testing' => [
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => env('TESTING_DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
            'database'  => env('TESTING_DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username'  => env('TESTING_DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password'  => env('TESTING_DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
            'strict'    => false,
        ],

And now in your .env add the values for:

TESTING_DB_HOST=localhost
TESTING_DB_DATABASE=homestead_testing
TESTING_DB_USERNAME=homestead
TESTING_DB_PASSWORD=secret

Now you can run

php artisan migrate --database=mysql_testing

And it will migrate your testing database.

You could do it that way, however, mysql will keep the data for your future tests. As you might have done some changes in your database, I don't find this as the perfect approach.

What I do is to edit codeception.yml file to set:

modules:
    config:
        Db:
            dsn: 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=myapp_testing'
            user: 'homestead'
            password: 'secret'
            dump: tests/_data/dump.sql
            cleanup: true

Note the cleanup set to "true". This will truncate the database every time you run your tests.

I have previously exported my database into dump.slq using

mysqldump myapp_testing -uhomestead > tests/_data/dump.sql

This way you are always testing from the same database data and structure.

I have considered your approach, but when using Laravel5 module for Codeception every functional test is run in transaction mode. So at the end of the test I still have clean database for the next test

Your approach does not fit me, because I am at a stage where I use migrations a lot. And if I add a new migration I would have to do a new mysql dump for each migration which becomes a waste of time.

Thanks a lot @mabasic I've been going crazy over this for like an hour already, trying to figure it out.

Hi @mabasic, I Use your configuration, but, If I have an autoincrement field, that does not start in one for the next test. How can I do that? Could I truncate the table?

Kind reguards.

@Krasho Run your database interactions inside a transaction so that any changes are rolled back at the end of the test. A better choice, if you want to test your database, is to use an sqlite database, which is much faster. To reset the database, all you need to do is copy in the physical file that is your database before the tests run.

This is a very informative thread. What I'm currently doing is I automate the step of creating a fresh database dump whenever Codeception is run.

https://github.com/antennaio/laravel-codeception-dbdump