Load fixtures one time before all phpunit test on symfony 3 - performance

Question

I ve got a SF3 application and lot of functionnals tests.
Before each tests we load and purge all fixtures.
Time of all tests are so long.
I would like to load fixtures just one time et truncate after last test.
Is it the good method to improve functionnal tests speed ?
Is there a php method in phpunit which is launched just one time before all tests ? (Because setUpBeforeClass is executed before each test)
An exemple of the setUpBeforeClass method in my test's classes.
class SearchRegisterControllerTest extends WebTestCase
{
/** #var Client $client */
private $client;
protected static $application;
public static function setUpBeforeClass()
{
$kernel = static::createKernel();
$kernel->boot();
$em = $kernel->getContainer()->get('doctrine.orm.entity_manager');
$schemaTool = new SchemaTool($em);
$metadata = $em->getMetadataFactory()->getAllMetadata();
$schemaTool->dropSchema($metadata);
$schemaTool->createSchema($metadata);
/** #var Client $client */
$client = static::createClient();
$em = $client->getContainer()->get('doctrine.orm.entity_manager');
$loader = new Loader();
$loader->loadFromDirectory('src/MyNameSpace/AppBundle/DataFixtures/ORM');
$purger = new ORMPurger();
$executor = new ORMExecutor($em, $purger);
$executor->execute($loader->getFixtures(), true);
}
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You could implement a test listener.
tests/StartTestSuiteListener.php
namespace App\Tests;
class StartTestSuite extends \PHPUnit_Framework_BaseTestListener
{
public function startTestSuite(\PHPUnit_Framework_TestSuite $suite)
{
// do initial stuff
}
}
Then enable enable the test listener in your phpunit.xml config:
phpunit.xml
<phpunit
...
>
<listeners>
<listener class="App\Tests\StartTestSuiteListener">
</listener>
</listeners>
[...]
</phpunit>
In the same manner you could implement a endTestSuite (Check for all event listed in the doc)
Hope this help

Answer 2

You can use bash script like this to load fixtures once before all tests.
php bin/console doctrine:database:create --env=test --if-not-exists
php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --force --env=test --complete
php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load --fixtures=tests/fixtures/api --env=test --no-interaction
php vendor/bin/phpunit tests/Functional
Keep in mind that your test will not be executed within isolated environments with fresh data and thus will interfere with each other.