Unit testing cakephp models

Question

So I'm having trouble with unit testing CakePHP models. Simple stuff like writing tests that my validation rules are catching errors etc.

To begin with, I have a model called NewsItem. Its defined in my MySQL database using the following schema

CREATE TABLE news_items (
    id INT UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(140) NOT NULL,
    body TEXT NOT NULL,
    modified DATETIME DEFAULT NULL,
    created DATETIME DEFAULT NULL
);

The model is following

<?php
class NewsItem extends AppModel {

    var $name = 'NewsItem';
    var $validate = array(
     'title' => array(
      'titleRule-1' => array(
       'rule' => array('maxLength', 140),
       'message' => 'News item\'s title\'s length exceeds limit of 140 characters'
      ),
      'titleRule-2' => array(
       'rule' => 'alphaNumeric',
       'required' => true,
       'message' => 'Cannot save news item without a title'
      )
     )
    );

}
?>

And in my test case I have

// Validation lets All data good through
function testValidationAllowsNormalData()
{
 $this->assertTrue($this->NewsItem->save(array('NewsItem' => array('title' => 'A news item', 'body' => 'Some news'))));
}

However I'm my test case fails. Any ideas, suggestions, comments?

Answer 1

I'm not hugely familiar with cakePHP, but wouldn't save attempt to persist to the database? That should not be in a unit test if that is the case...

Answer 2

The alphaNumeric validation rule only allows, well, alphanumeric characters, i.e. no spaces. So your test fails correctly.