oracular (3) Test::DatabaseRow.3pm.gz
NAME
Test::DatabaseRow - simple database tests
SYNOPSIS
use Test::More tests => 3;
use Test::DatabaseRow;
# set the default database handle
local $Test::DatabaseRow::dbh = $dbh;
# sql based test
all_row_ok(
sql => "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE cid = '123'",
tests => [ name => "trelane" ],
description => "contact 123's name is trelane"
);
# test with shortcuts
all_row_ok(
table => "contacts",
where => [ cid => 123 ],
tests => [ name => "trelane" ],
description => "contact 123's name is trelane"
);
# complex test
all_row_ok(
table => "contacts",
where => { '=' => { name => "trelane" },
'like' => { url => '%shortplanks.com' },},
tests => { '==' => { cid => 123,
num => 134 },
'eq' => { person => "Mark Fowler" },
'=~' => { road => qr/Liverpool R.?.?d/ },},
description => "trelane entered into contacts okay" );
);
DESCRIPTION
This is a simple module for doing simple tests on a database, primarily designed to test if a row exists
with the correct details in a table or not.
This module exports several functions.
row_ok
The "row_ok" function takes named attributes that control which rows in which table it selects, and what
tests are carried out on those rows.
By default it performs the tests against only the first row returned from the database, but parameters
passed to it can alter that behavior.
dbh The database handle that the test should use. In lieu of this attribute being passed the test will
use whatever handle is set in the $Test::DatabaseRow::dbh global variable.
sql Manually specify the SQL to select the rows you want this module to execute.
This can either be just a plain string, or it can be an array ref with the first element containing
the SQL string and any further elements containing bind variables that will be used to fill in
placeholders.
# using the plain string version
row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE cid = '123'",
tests => [ name => "Trelane" ]);
# using placeholders and bind variables
row_ok(sql => [ "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE cid = ?", 123 ],
tests => [ name => "Trelane" ]);
table
Build the SELECT statement programmatically. This parameter contains the name of the table the
SELECT statement should be executed against. You cannot pass both a "table" parameter and a "sql"
parameter. If you specify "table" you must pass a "where" parameter also (see below.)
where
Build the SELECT statement programmatically. This parameter should contain options that will combine
into a WHERE clause in order to select the row that you want to test.
This options normally are a hash of hashes. It's a hashref keyed by SQL comparison operators that
has in turn values that are further hashrefs of column name and values pairs. This sounds really
complicated, but is quite simple once you've been shown an example. If we could get get the data to
test with a SQL like so:
SELECT *
FROM tablename
WHERE foo = 'bar'
AND baz = 23
AND fred LIKE 'wilma%'
AND age >= 18
Then we could have the function build that SQL like so:
row_ok(table => "tablename",
where => { '=' => { foo => "bar",
baz => 23, },
'LIKE' => { fred => 'wimla%', },
'>=' => { age => '18', },});
Note how each different type of comparison has it's own little hashref containing the column name and
the value for that column that the associated operator SQL should search for.
This syntax is quite flexible, but can be overkill for simple tests. In order to make this simpler,
if you are only using '=' tests you may just pass an arrayref of the column names / values. For
example, just to test
SELECT *
FROM tablename
WHERE foo = 'bar'
AND baz = 23;
You can simply pass
row_ok(table => "tablename",
where => [ foo => "bar",
baz => 23, ]);
Which, in a lot of cases, makes things a lot quicker and simpler to write.
NULL values can confuse things in SQL. All you need to remember is that when building SQL statements
use "undef" whenever you want to use a NULL value. Don't use the string "NULL" as that'll be
interpreted as the literal string made up of a N, a U and two Ls.
As a special case, using "undef" either in a "=" or in the short arrayref form will cause a "IS" test
to be used instead of a "=" test. This means the statements:
row_ok(table => "tablename",
where => [ foo => undef ],)
Will produce:
SELECT *
FROM tablename
WHERE foo IS NULL
tests
The comparisons that you want to run between the expected data and the data in the first line
returned from the database. If you do not specify any tests then the test will simply check if any
rows are returned from the database and will pass no matter what they actually contain.
Normally this is a hash of hashes in a similar vein to "where". This time the outer hash is keyed by
Perl comparison operators, and the inner hashes contain column names and the expected values for
these columns. For example:
row_ok(sql => $sql,
tests => { "eq" => { wibble => "wobble",
fish => "fosh", },
"==" => { bob => 4077 },
"=~" => { fred => qr/barney/ },},);
This checks that the column wibble is the string "wobble", column fish is the string "fosh", column
bob is equal numerically to 4077, and that fred contains the text "barney". You may use any infix
comparison operator (e.g. "<", ">", "&&", etc, etc) as a test key.
The first comparison to fail (to return false) will cause the whole test to fail, and debug
information will be printed out on that comparison.
In a similar fashion to "where" you can also pass a arrayref for simple comparisons. The function
will try and Do The Right Thing with regard to the expected value for that comparison. Any expected
value that looks like a number will be compared numerically, a regular expression will be compared
with the "=~" operator, and anything else will undergo string comparison. The above example
therefore could be rewritten:
row_ok(sql => $sql,
tests => [ wibble => "wobble",
fish => "fosh",
bob => 4077,
fred => qr/barney/ ]);
check_all_rows
Setting this to a true value causes "row_ok" to run the tests against all rows returned from the
database not just the first.
verbose
Setting this option to a true value will cause verbose diagnostics to be printed out during any
failing tests. You may also enable this feature by setting either $Test::DatabaseRow::verbose
variable or the "TEST_DBROW_VERBOSE" environmental variable to a true value.
verbose_data
Setting this option to a true value will cause the results of running the SQL queries to be printed
out during any failing tests. You may also enable this feature by setting either
$Test::DatabaseRow::verbose_data variable or the "TEST_DBROW_VERBOSE_DATA" environmental variable to
a true value.
store_rows
Sometimes, it's not enough to just use the simple tests that Test::DatabaseRow offers you. In this
situation you can use the "store_rows" function to get at the results that row_ok has extracted from
the database. You should pass a reference to an array for the results to be stored in; After the
call to "row_ok" this array will be populated with one hashref per row returned from the database,
keyed by column names.
row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contact WHERE name = 'Trelane'",
store_rows => \@rows);
ok(Email::Valid->address($rows[0]{'email'}));
store_row
The same as "store_rows", but only the stores the first row returned in the variable. Instead of
passing in an array reference you should pass in either a reference to a hash...
row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contact WHERE name = 'Trelane'",
store_rows => \%row);
ok(Email::Valid->address($row{'email'}));
...or a reference to a scalar which should be populated with a hashref...
row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contact WHERE name = 'Trelane'",
store_rows => \$row);
ok(Email::Valid->address($row->{'email'}));
description
The description that this test will use with "Test::Builder", i.e the thing that will be printed out
after ok/not ok. For example:
row_ok(
sql => "SELECT * FROM queue",
description => "something in the queue"
);
Hopefully produces something like:
ok 1 - something in the queue
For historical reasons you may also pass "label" for this parameter.
Checking the number of results
By default "row_ok" just checks the first row returned from the database matches the criteria passed. By
setting the parameters below you can also cause the module to check that the correct number of rows are
returned from by the select statement (though only the first row will be tested against the test
conditions.)
results
Setting this parameter causes the test to ensure that the database returns exactly this number of
rows when the select statement is executed. Setting this to zero allows you to ensure that no
matching rows were found by the database, hence this parameter can be used for negative assertions
about the database.
# assert that Trelane is _not_ in the database
row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE name = 'Trelane'",
results => 0 );
# convenience function that does the same thing
not_row_ok(sql => "SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE name = 'Trelane'")
min_results / max_results
This parameter allows you to test that the database returns at least or no more than the passed
number of rows when the select statement is executed.
Convenience Functions
This module also exports a few convenience functions that make using certain features of "row_ok" more
straight forward.
all_row_ok
The "all_row_ok" function is shorthand notation for "Check every row returned from the database not
just the first"
For example:
all_row_ok(tests => { ">=" => { age => "18" } }, sql => <<'SQL');
SELECT *
FROM drinkers
WHERE country = 'uk'
SQL
Checks to see that all drinkers from the UK are over 18. It's identical to having written:
row_ok(tests => { ">=" => { age => "18" } },
check_all_rows => 1, sql => <<'SQL');
SELECT *
FROM drinkers
WHERE country = 'uk'
SQL
not_row_ok
The "not_row_ok" function is shorthand notation for "the database returned no rows when I executed
this SQL".
For example:
not_row_ok(sql => <<'SQL');
SELECT *
FROM languages
WHERE name = 'Java'
SQL
Checks to see the database doesn't have any rows in the language table that have a name "Java". It's
exactly the same as if we'd written:
row_ok(sql => <<'SQL', results => 0);
SELECT *
FROM languages
WHERE name = 'Java'
SQL
Other SQL modules
The SQL creation routines that are part of this module are designed primarily with the concept of getting
simple single rows out of the database with as little fuss as possible. This having been said, it's
quite possible that you need to use a more complicated SQL generation scheme than the one provided.
This module is designed to work (hopefully) reasonably well with the other modules on CPAN that can
automatically create SQL for you. For example, SQL::Abstract is a module that can manufacture much more
complex select statements that can easily be 'tied in' to "row_ok":
use SQL::Abstract;
use Test::DatabaseRow;
my $sql = SQL::Abstract->new();
# more complex routine to find me heuristically by looking
# for any one of my nicknames and my street address
row_ok(sql => [ $sql->select("contacts",
"*",
{ name => [ "Trelane",
"Trel",
"MarkF" ],
road => { 'like' => "Liverpool%" },
})],
tests => [ email => 'mark@twoshortplanks.com' ],
description => "check mark's email address");
utf8 hacks
Often, you may store data utf8 data in your database. However, many modern databases still do not store
the metadata to indicate the data stored in them is utf8 and their DBD drivers may not set the utf8 flag
on values returned to Perl. This means that data returned to Perl will be treated as if it is encoded in
your normal character set rather than being encoded in utf8 and when compared to a byte for byte an
identical utf8 string may fail comparison.
# this will fail incorrectly on data coming back from
# mysql since the utf8 flags won't be set on returning data
use utf8;
row_ok(sql => $sql,
tests => [ name => "Napol\x{e9}on" ]);
The solution to this is to use "Encode::_utf_on($value)" on each value returned from the database,
something you will have to do yourself in your application code. To get this module to do this for you
you can either pass the "force_utf8" flag to "row_ok".
use utf8;
row_ok(sql => $sql,
tests => [ name => "Napol\x{e9}on" ],
force_utf8 => 1);
Or set the global $Test::DatabaseRow::force_utf8 variable
use utf8;
local $Test::DatabaseRow::force_utf8 = 1;
row_ok(sql => $sql,
tests => [ name => "Napol\x{e9}on" ]);
Please note that in the above examples with "use utf8" enabled I could have typed Unicode eacutes into
the string directly rather than using the "\x{e9}" escape sequence, but alas the pod renderer you're
using to view this documentation would have been unlikely to render those examples correctly, so I
didn't.
Please also note that if you want the debug information that this module creates to be rendered to STDERR
correctly for your utf8 terminal then you may need to stick
binmode STDERR, ":utf8";
At the top of your script.
Using a custom object subclass
This procedural wrapper relies on the base functionality of "Test::DatabaseRow::Object" to do the actual
work. If you want to subclass that class (for example to use an alternative method of accessing the
database) but continue to use this wrapper class you can do so by setting the
$Test::DatabaseRow::object_class variable.
For example:
local $Test::DatabaseRow::object_class =
"Test::DatabaseRow::Object::MyFunnySubclassOrOther";
row_ok(
sql => "SELECT * FROM qa WHERE a = '42'",
);
BUGS
You must pass a "sql" or "where" argument to limit what is returned from the table. The case where you
don't want to is so unlikely (and it's much more likely that you've written a bug in your test script)
that omitting both of these is treated as an error. If you really need to not pass a "sql" or "where"
argument, do "where => [ 1 => 1 ]".
Passing shared variables (variables shared between multiple threads with threads::shared) in with
"store_row" and "store_rows" and then changing them while "row_ok" is still executing is just asking for
trouble.
The utf8 stuff only really works with perl 5.8 and later. It just goes horribly wrong on earlier perls.
There's nothing I can do to correct that. Also, no matter what version of Perl you're running, currently
no way provided by this module to force the utf8 flag to be turned on for some fields and not on for
others.
The inbuilt SQL builder always assumes you mean "IS NULL" not "= NULL" when you pass in "undef" in a "="
section
Bugs (and requests for new features) can be reported though the CPAN RT system:
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Test-DatabaseRow>
Alternatively, you can simply fork this project on github and send me pull requests. Please see
<http://github.com/2shortplanks/Test-DatabaseRow>
AUTHOR
Written by Mark Fowler mark@twoshortplanks.com Copyright Profero 2003, 2004. Copyright Mark Fowler 2011. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
Test::DatabaseRow::Object, Test::More, DBI