Accessing Model in CakePHP Controller Test - unit-testing

Question

I'm new to CakePHP, and I just started writing my first tests. Usually doing Ruby on Rails, my approach to testing a Controller::create action would be to call the create action, and then comparing the number of models before and after that call, making sure it increased by one.
Would anyone test this any other way?
Is there an easy (builtin) way to access models from a ControllerTest in CakePHP? I couldn't find anything in the source, and accessing it through the Controller seems wrong.

Answer 1

I ended up doing something like this:
class AbstractControllerTestCase extends ControllerTestCase {
/**
* Load models, to be used like $this->DummyModel->[...]
* #param array
*/
public function loadModels() {
$models = func_get_args();
foreach ($models as $modelClass) {
$name = $modelClass . 'Model';
if(!isset($this->{$name})) {
$this->{$name} = ClassRegistry::init(array(
'class' => $modelClass, 'alias' => $modelClass
));
}
}
}
}
Then my tests inherit from AbstractControllerTestCase, call $this->loadModels('User'); in setUp and can do something like this in the test:
$countBefore = $this->UserModel->find('count');
// call the action with POST params
$countAfter = $this->UserModel->find('count');
$this->assertEquals($countAfter, $countBefore + 1);

Answer 2

Note that I'm new to CakePHP but came here with this question. Here's what I ended up doing.
I got my idea from #amiuhle, but I just do it manually in setUp, like how they mention in the model tests at http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/development/testing.html.
public function setUp() {
$this->Signup = ClassRegistry::init('Signup');
}
public function testMyTestXYZ() {
$data = array('first_name' => 'name');
$countBefore = $this->Signup->find('count');
$result = $this->testAction('/signups/add',
array(
'data' => array(
'Signup' => $data)
)
);
$countAfter = $this->Signup->find('count');
$this->assertEquals($countAfter, $countBefore + 1);
}

Answer 3

I am not sure why it is necessary to test how many times a model is called or instantiated from the controller action.
So, if I was testing Controller::create... my ControllerTest would contain something like:
testCreate(){
$result = $this->testAction('/controller/create');
if(!strpos($result,'form')){
$this->assertFalse(true);
}
$data = array(
'Article' => array(
'user_id' => 1,
'published' => 1,
'slug' => 'new-article',
'title' => 'New Article',
'body' => 'New Body'
)
);
$result = $this->testAction(
'/controller/create',
array('data' => $data, 'method' => 'post')
);
if(!strpos($result,'Record has been successfully created')){
$this->assertFalse(true);
}
}
The main things you want to test for is whether you are getting the right output for the input. And you can use xDebug profiler to easily find out what classes get instnantiated in a particular action and even how many times. There is no need to test for that manually!