Whilst trying to set up a new test environment I’ve run into another lovely Symfony2 bug/error. I have a functional test with a body as such:

public function testFoo()
{
    $client = self::createClient();
    $client->request('GET', '/foo/');
    $this->assertEquals( 403, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode() );
}

FYI I’m trying to test access roles are working correctly so I should get a 403 forbidden.

And my relevant config_test.yml:

imports:
    - { resource: config_dev.yml }
    - { resource: parameters_test.ini }

framework:
    router:   { resource: "%kernel.root_dir%/config/routing_test.yml" }
    test:     ~

Upon running this test I get the lovely error:

Warning: session_start(): The session id is too long or contains illegal characters, valid characters are a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and '-,' in /home/james/foo/vendor/symfony/src/Symfony/Component/HttpFoundation/SessionStorage/NativeSessionStorage.php line 87 (500 Internal Server Error)

After messing with the config and looking around, it turns out this is a known issue. For whatever reason, my config was missing some required session parameters for testing. Have a look at https://github.com/symfony/symfony/issues/1759 for more info. To fix it, I had to change the session storage method params in config_test.yml from native (inherited) to filesystem:

framework:
    router:   { resource: "%kernel.root_dir%/config/routing_test.yml" }
    test:     ~
    session:
      storage_id: session.storage.filesystem

Now, the exception is gone and the test runs:

$ phpunit --stop-on-error --stop-on-failure -c app src/Foo/Bundle/SecurityBundle/
PHPUnit 3.5.5 by Sebastian Bergmann.

..F

Time: 1 second, Memory: 29.75Mb

There was 1 failure:

1) Foo\Bundle\FooBundle\Tests\Functional\SecurityTest::testFoo
Failed asserting that  matches expected .

/home/james/code/Foo/Bundle/SecurityBundle/Tests/Functional/SecurityTest.php:59

FAILURES!
Tests: 3, Assertions: 4, Failures: 1.

Great, next problem…