phpunit test laravel creating object and relationship - unit-testing

Question

This question is one in a series I seem to be generating as I slowly pick my way through learning testing.
I have a book model and a ticketaudit model. They have a relationship one to many. When a book is created a function should also create a range of tickets (for audit).
I want my test to make sure the ticketAudit model is being created and the association being made using the eloquent ORM within laravel.
my class so far:
Class TicketCreator implements TicketCreatorInterface {
protected $ticket;
public function __construct(TicketAudit $ticketAudit)
{
//dd($ticketAudit);
$this->ticket = $ticketAudit;
}
public function createTicket($input, $book) {
$counter = $input['start'];
while($counter <= $input['end']) {
$ticketDetails = array(
'ticketnumber'=>$counter,
'status'=>'unused',
'active'=>1
);
$this->ticket->create($ticketDetails)->save();
$this->ticket->book()->associate($book)->save();
$counter = $counter+1;
}
return $counter;
}
}
and my attempts at a test:
public function testCreateCreatesTickets() {
//arrange
$book = FactoryMuff::create('Book');
$aTicket = FactoryMuff::create('TicketAudit');
$ticketAudit = new TicketAudit;
$ticketCreator = new TicketCreator($ticketAudit);
//act
$response = $ticketCreator->createTicket(array('start'=>1000, 'end'=>1001), $book);
// Assert...
$this->assertEquals(true, $response);
}
However when I run this test I get the error:
Integrity constraint violation: 19 ticket_audits.ticketnumber may not be NULL
For some reason the model is not being created with the values I pass to it. I've checked in the function that the object exists and also the values are being created correctly in the array but it doesnt work.
Is this unique to testing?
I am creating an sqlite in memory database for this test.
Any help appreciated
Crikey this decision to start testing is a bit of a nightmare

Answer 1

Thanks to Manuel's request to post the TicketAudit class I noticed my model extended Eloquent. I had recently added Ardent and should have extended Ardent so the error lay in the model!
Revised corrected model :
use LaravelBook\Ardent\Ardent;
class TicketAudit extends Ardent {
protected $guarded = array();
public $autoHydrateEntityFromInput = true;
public $autoPurgeRedundantAttributes = true;
public static $rules = array(
'status' => 'required',
'ticketnumber' => 'required'
);
public static $factory = array(
'ticketnumber' => '1000',
'status' => 'unused',
);
public function book() {
return $this->belongsTo('Book');
}
}
Thank you for the sign post