assertEqual() does not work with arrays [#299461]

Calling $this->assertEqual($array1, $array2) without a third argument triggers an error. Though unusual, array comparison using == and === is allowed in PHP.

The function looks like this:

  protected function assertEqual($first, $second, $message = '', $group = 'Other') {
    return $this->_assert($first == $second, $message ? $message : t('%first is equal to %second', array('%first' => $first, '%second' => $second)), $group);
  }

In order to be used in the default message, the arrays should be converted to a string, e.g. using print_r() or similar.

Comment	File	Size	Author
#6	299461-assert-messages.patch	5.25 KB	Damien Tournoud
#6
#1	simpletest_assertEqual_array.patch	1.45 KB	boombatower
#1

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Comments

Comment #1

boombatower CreditAttribution: boombatower commented 25 August 2008 at 01:37

Assigned:	Unassigned	» boombatower
Status:	Active	» Needs review

File	Size
simpletest_assertEqual_array.patch	1.45 KB

Messed around with print_r and as expected it works fine with none array values such as strings or numbers.

This patch adds print_r($variable, TRUE).

Comment #2

Damien Tournoud CreditAttribution: Damien Tournoud commented 25 August 2008 at 07:16

I'm not sure it makes sense to default to a message like "1 is equal to 1".

It makes much more sense to describe the variables that were asserted rather that the values. Something like:

ERROR: assertion failed (string == "bar")
ERROR: assertion failed: (glyph->num_glyphs > 0)

As seen somewhere around the big world of glib.

Comment #3

c960657 CreditAttribution: c960657 commented 25 August 2008 at 20:34

I like the idea, but I'm afraid that would be pretty hard to implement. AFAICT the assert function has no way of knowing the variable names, at least not without parsing the source code or using similar hacks. One alternative would be to make another function, e.g. function assertEqualVariable($varname1, $varname2), that take variable names rather than values as input. But I guess this is outside the scope of this issue.

Comment #4

boombatower CreditAttribution: boombatower commented 26 August 2008 at 04:44

This is a bug, that would be a feature request, and from experience creating a PHP debug script it is very hard to display the variable names. XDebug and the like might be able to, but once again separate issue.

Comment #5

Rok Žlender CreditAttribution: Rok Žlender commented 27 August 2008 at 14:28

This is not only problematic for arrays but also objects. example

 $node = node_load(array('title' => 'blabla'));
 $this->assertNull($node);

will produce an error. Print_r will work but will produce huge output if we are looking at node. So maybe just output 'Object is null' or something similar.

Comment #6

Damien Tournoud CreditAttribution: Damien Tournoud commented 27 August 2008 at 14:45

File	Size
299461-assert-messages.patch	5.25 KB

This bit us too many times already (including today, during the presentation). I suggest changing all default assert messages to static texts. Patch attached.