New dump for every Codeception test?

Well, Codeception should never be hitting a database that has "real" data anyway. Normally you would have a separate "testing" database even on localhost.

That way you can separate the data for "me testing the website" from the data for "Codeception testing the website".

Maintaining the DB dumps can be a pain though. I wrote an Artisan command to refresh all my local databases, including the Codeception dump.

I would not advise running Codeception against the production site, regardless. It's just too easy to screw up and accidentally wipe the production database.

That sounds reasonable. Guess I need a little shift on my thinking. Thx!

To continue on this topic, How do I set up a testing database.

That is, i have created a testing database, my question is how do I configure codeception to use it?

Do I need to make a .env.testing file (with test database in it), and some codeception's .yml files?

Which ones? :)

@Mike Hopley If you write functional or acceptance tests then you need to use a database! You can write those tests with Codeception as well. Codeception is not only used for unit tests, where you mock stuff!

@zs42311 Here is a sample project made with Codeception to help you setup and give you a good start: https://github.com/janhenkgerritsen/codeception-laravel5-sample

@blackbird Actually I was assuming we were talking about acceptance tests! See below...

@christophrumpel I may have jumped to conclusions here when I read "So after every test CC restores my DB from the dump I provide." I didn't read your post very well.

My understanding is that this was the usual setup for acceptance tests: use mysql, and provide a dump for Codeception to restore from. If you read the Codeception docs, that's what they suggest; and people here have had trouble trying to use another solution like migrating the database.

With functional tests, I thought the normal solution is either (a) migrate and seed a testing database (mysql or sqlite) or (b) use sqlite and restore from a file (which is about 15 times faster).

Where you are restoring from a file or a dump, you might need to update it occasionally. You can write an Artisan command to do this for you.

It seems there are several variations you can use. With functional tests (i.e. "database tests"), I would avoid using a mysql dump because I think it would slow down these tests excessively. With acceptance tests, which are pretty slow already especially in Webdriver, it's not much of an issue; and also this seems to be what Codeception expects you to do.