I've been following a BDD approach using Behat to develop a RESTful API on my current project and wanted to fully isolate the data base from feature to feature, so first I tried with:

/*** @BeforeFeature*/
public static function beforeFeature(BeforeFeatureScope $scope)
{echo shell_exec('app/console doctrine:schema:drop --env=test --force');echo shell_exec('app/console doctrine:schema:create --env=test');echo shell_exec('app/console doctrine:fixtures:load --env=test -n');
}

and it was pretty slow, in my case it was taking an average of 1,5s...

Reading the DoctrineFixturesBundle help I found a nice --purge-with-truncate flag, but TA DAN, it was failing with this issue: https://github.com/doctrine/data-fixtures/pull/127

Well, I solved it by replacing the MySqlPlatform::getTruncateTableSQL method like:

config_test.yml

doctrine: dbal: driver_class: Your\OwnBundle\DBAL\Driver ...

src/Your/OwnBundle/DBAL/Driver.php

<?php

namespace Your\OwnBundle\DBAL;use Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDOMySql\Driver as BaseDriver;class Driver extends BaseDriver
{/*** {@inheritdoc}*/public function getDatabasePlatform(){return new Platform();}
}

src/Your/OwnBundle/DBAL/Platform.php

<?php

namespace Your\OwnBundle\DBAL;use Doctrine\DBAL\Platforms\MySqlPlatform;class Platform extends MySqlPlatform
{/*** {@inheritdoc}*/public function getTruncateTableSQL($tableName, $cascade = false){return sprintf('SET foreign_key_checks = 0;TRUNCATE %s;SET foreign_key_checks = 1;', $tableName);}
}

And finally:

/*** @BeforeFeature*/
public static function beforeFeature(BeforeFeatureScope $scope)
{echo shell_exec('app/console doctrine:fixtures:load --env=test --purge-with-truncate -n');
}

It's hacky, I know, but it does the job for the tests and cuts down the average time to 0,4s.