Notes about my solution
@KevinPfeifer’s suggestions were useful and instructive but didn’t quite satisfy my need. Truth is, my phinx migrations that build the template tables in the testing db brought me to the same point.
Its possible to get a generic Table and Entity objects using $this->getTableLocator()->get('SomeAlias') based on bootstrapped or phinx created schemas.
However I needed the fixtures to return entities that also implemented another interface that was part of my design. The generic objects wouldn’t do.
Mocks
It’s possible I could write my classes then mock them for my tests and I may end up doing that in some tests.
But I was hooked on the question of whether my idea was possible.
The Real Deal
Writing the required Table and Entity classes in the directories I suggested worked fine. Just get the namespaces correct. The only change from normal was in the Table class where I had to implement:
//in Table class
/**
* Returns the database connection name to use by default.
*
* @return string
*/
public static function defaultConnectionName(): string
{
return 'test';
}
No surprise there.
The FixtureFactory could also be written as normal with two changes:
//In the SpecialTestingFactory class
//import the new table along with the other dependencies
use App\Test\src\Model\Table\SpecialTestingTable;
//identify this Table as the source for the factory
/**
* Defines the Table Registry used to generate entities with
*
* @return string
*/
protected function getRootTableRegistryName(): string
{
return SpecialTestingTable::class;
}
Notes on baking
Baking rather than hand writing these classes was possible but took a few extra steps.
Baking the CakePHP model was straightforward. Just use the -c option to set the proper connection.
With those in place I could bake the FixtureFactory as normal.
Final edits
The cake bake files end up in the normal App\Model\Table and App\Model\Entity directories but my IDE makes it easy to move these to my desired location. The Factory bakes to its normal correct location.
Once I made sure the edits to the classes I’ve identified were correct, everything worked as I wanted.
