# Testing your Controllers and MVC Applications

Once you have your bootstrap in place, you can begin testing. Testing is basically as you would expect in an PHPUnit test suite, with a few minor differences.

First, you will need to dispatch a URL to test, using the `dispatch()` method of the TestCase:

    class IndexControllerTest extends Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase
    {
        // ...

        public function testHomePage()
        {
            $this->dispatch('/');
            // ...
        }
    }

There will be times, however, that you need to provide extra information -- `GET` and POST variables, COOKIE information, etc. You can populate the request with that information:

    class FooControllerTest extends Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase
    {
        // ...

        public function testBarActionShouldReceiveAllParameters()
        {
            // Set GET variables:
            $this->request->setQuery(array(
                'foo' => 'bar',
                'bar' => 'baz',
            ));

            // Set POST variables:
            $this->request->setPost(array(
                'baz'  => 'bat',
                'lame' => 'bogus',
            ));

            // Set a cookie value:
            $this->request->setCookie('user', 'matthew');
            // or many:
            $this->request->setCookies(array(
                'timestamp' => time(),
                'host'      => 'foobar',
            ));

            // Set headers, even:
            $this->request->setHeader('X-Requested-With', 'XmlHttpRequest');

            // Set the request method:
            $this->request->setMethod('POST');

            // Dispatch:
            $this->dispatch('/foo/bar');

            // ...
        }
    }

Now that the request is made, it's time to start making assertions against it.

## Controller Tests and the Redirector Action Helper

The redirect action helper issues an `exit()` statement when using the method `gotoAndExit()` and will then obviously also stop any tests running against controllers using this method. For testability of your application dont use that method of the redirector!

Due to its nature the redirector action helper plugin issues a redirect and then exits. Because you cannot test parts of an application that issue exit calls `Zend_Test_PHPUnit_ControllerTestCase` automatically disables the exit part of the redirector as it can cause test behavior to differ from the real application. To ensure your controllers can be properly tested, please make use of the redirector when you need to redirect the user to a different page:

    class MyController extends Zend_Controller_Action
    {
        public function indexAction()
        {
            if($someCondition == true) {
                return $this->_redirect(...);
            } else if($anotherCondition == true) {
                $this->_redirector->gotoSimple("foo");
                return;
            }

            // do some stuff here
        }
    }

Depending on your application this is not enough as additional action, `preDispatch()` or `postDispatch()` logic might be executed. This cannot be handled in a good way with Zend Test currently.