PHPUnit: Modify database entry during functional tests using dbunit or anything else

Question

I am a student, and I quite new to php. For my practical education I am required to write functional tests using PHPUnit on a big project. For last 3 days I am stuck trying to work with database during PHPUnit tests. For example I have made tests for users to register to the website and login. But the problem was as users register I have to activate them. I managed to use crawler to activate, but it would be way easier if I could just access the database, make a query and than go forward with tests. Even excluding this, I wanted to create a mock (I believe this is how it's called) and just run the tests in database so I would not have to use crawler and long way to login as admin and manualy delete user.

I am not skilled enough to know how to solve this task. I tried installing dbUnit and reading the tutorial. But when i tried using it I did not manage to complete anything. Using SetUp() and TearDown() also did not work.

Here are the links I found on stackoverflow with questions similar to mine: Delete test entity after testing with phpunit symfony -this guy has almost the same use of crawler as I do, but I do not understand the solution. Phpunit testing with database -The answer here is good, and that's where I decided to get dbunit. However I can not manage to do anything with it because of my lack of understanding.

Anyway, here is my code (stripped out, as I have 500 lines of crawler crawling on website) I am running all tests in one class as if they are running one after another I can follow the process of registering, logging in and deleting. If I was able to know how to use database interractions in between life would be so much easier.

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Test\WebTestCase;
use Doctrine\ORM\EntityRepository;
use PHPUnit_Extensions_Database_TestCase_Trait;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Test\KernelTestCase;
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\ObjectManager;
use PDO;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;
class LoginRegistroTest extends WebTestCase
{
+public function testUserRegisterFail()        

+public function testUserRegister() //check if new user can be registered and this also writes the user to the database
+public function testAdminLogin() //this uses the website admin panel and crawler to login and find the registered user and change Active from 0 to 1.
+public function testLoginFail()
+public function testUserLogin() //check if new user can login
+public function testUserDelete() //delete the user created for testing - again using the website admin panel and admin account. 
}

Edit: here is a code that I would like to work for example but i don't know how to execute query. Note at the end where I would like to change the name of a user for example.

/**
        * @var \Doctrine\ORM\EntityManager
        */
        private $em;

     /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    protected function setUp()
    {
        self::bootKernel();

        $this->em = static::$kernel->getContainer()
            ->get('doctrine')
            ->getManager();
    }



    public function testUserRegister() //check if new artista can be registered
    {


        $client = static::createClient();
        $crawler=$client->request('GET', "/");
        // Create a new client to browse the application
        $link = $crawler->filter('a:contains("Regístrate")')->eq(0)->link();
        $crawler = $client->click($link);
        // var_dump($crawler->html());
        $this->assertEquals(1, $crawler->filter('h1:contains("REGISTRO")')->count());


        $buttonCrawlerNode = $crawler->selectButton("Entra");
        $form = $buttonCrawlerNode->form();
        $crawler->filter('#registro_category option:contains("Usuario")');

        $form['frontendbundle_artista[nombre]'] = 'Test404';
        $form['frontendbundle_artista[apellidos]'] = 'Test404';
        $form['frontendbundle_artista[email]'] = 'Test404@gmail.com';
        $form['frontendbundle_artista[password][first]'] = 'Test404';
        $form['frontendbundle_artista[password][second]'] = 'Test404';
        $form['frontendbundle_artista[condiciones]'] ->tick();

        // submit the form
        $client->followRedirects();
        $crawler = $client->submit($form);

        $this->assertEquals(200, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), "Unexpected HTTP status code for GET ");
        $this->assertTrue($crawler->filter('body:contains("Test404@gmail.com")')->count() >= 1 ); //if user was created this will be true

        $this->em
            ->CreateQuery('UPDATE usuario SET nombre = \'Alfred Schmidt\' WHERE UsuarioID = 2106;')
        ;

        $client->getResponse()->getContent();
    }

Answer 1

this is with what i was able to fix all my problems:

$em = $client->getContainer()->get('doctrine.orm.entity_manager');
        $nombre = 'Test405';
        $usuario =$em->getRepository('AppBundle:usuario')->findOneByNombre($nombre);
        $em->remove($usuario);
        $em->flush();