On his blog today Chris Hartjes has a new post about testing your Zend Framework application's functionality that lives behind a Zend_Auth authentication.

The initial problem though was how do I simulate logging in a user so I can see this page, which was protected by authentication using Zend_Auth. So I started my scouring the internet for answers.

I found quite a few examples on how to test a controller, using the $this->dispatch('/path/to/action') method but found that I wasn't getting redirected properly to the post-login page. I was passing proper credentials in and everything. Then finally after deciding to go back to basics and read up on just how to test Zend_Auth. After some swearing a few face-palms, I realized what I had been doing wrong.

He includes the ultimately successful code for the test that uses a "loginUser" method to handle the authentication and ensure that the user is correctly logged in.