Symfony2: Testing entity validation constraints

Question

Does anyone have a good way to unit test an entity\'s validation constraints in Symfony2?

Ideally I want to have access to the Dependency Injection Container within

Answer 1

Answer (b): Create the Validator inside the Unit Test (Symfony 2.0)

If you built a Constraint and a ConstraintValidator you don't need any DI container at all.

Say for example you want to test the Type constraint from Symfony and it's TypeValidator. You can simply do the following:

use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\TypeValidator;
use Symfony\Component\Validator\Constraints\Type;

class TypeValidatorTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
  function testIsValid()
  {
    // The Validator class.
    $v = new TypeValidator();

    // Call the isValid() method directly and pass a 
    // configured Type Constraint object (options
    // are passed in an associative array).

    $this->assertTrue($v->isValid(5, new Type(array('type' => 'integer'))));
    $this->assertFalse($v->isValid(5, new Type(array('type' => 'string'))));
  }
}

With this you can check every validator you like with any constraint configuration. You neither need the ValidatorFactory nor the Symfony kernel.

Update: As @psylosss pointed out, this doesn't work in Symfony 2.5. Nor does it work in Symfony >= 2.1. The interface from ConstraintValidator got changed: isValid was renamed to validate and doesn't return a boolean anymore. Now you need an ExecutionContextInterface to initialize a ConstraintValidator which itself needs at least a GlobalExecutionContextInterface and a TranslatorInterface... So basically it's not possible anymore without way too much work.