Laravel 4.2 Testing

Introduction

Laravel is built with unit testing in mind. In fact, support for testing with PHPUnit is included out of the box, and a phpunit.xml file is already setup for your application. In addition to PHPUnit, Laravel also utilizes the Symfony HttpKernel, DomCrawler, and BrowserKit components to allow you to inspect and manipulate your views while testing, allowing to simulate a web browser.

An example test file is provided in the app/tests directory. After installing a new Laravel application, simply run phpunit on the command line to run your tests.

Defining & Running Tests

To create a test case, simply create a new test file in the app/tests directory. The test class should extend TestCase. You may then define test methods as you normally would when using PHPUnit.

An Example Test Class

class FooTest extends TestCase {

	public function testSomethingIsTrue()
	{
		$this->assertTrue(true);
	}

}

You may run all of the tests for your application by executing the phpunit command from your terminal.

Note: If you define your own setUp method, be sure to call parent::setUp.

Test Environment

When running unit tests, Laravel will automatically set the configuration environment to testing. Also, Laravel includes configuration files for session and cache in the test environment. Both of these drivers are set to array while in the test environment, meaning no session or cache data will be persisted while testing. You are free to create other testing environment configurations as necessary.

Calling Routes From Tests

Calling A Route From A Test

You may easily call one of your routes for a test using the call method:

$response = $this->call('GET', 'user/profile');

$response = $this->call($method, $uri, $parameters, $files, $server, $content);

You may then inspect the Illuminate\Http\Response object:

$this->assertEquals('Hello World', $response->getContent());

Calling A Controller From A Test

You may also call a controller from a test:

$response = $this->action('GET', 'HomeController@index');

$response = $this->action('GET', 'UserController@profile', array('user' => 1));

The getContent method will return the evaluated string contents of the response. If your route returns a View, you may access it using the original property:

$view = $response->original;

$this->assertEquals('John', $view['name']);

To call a HTTPS route, you may use the callSecure method:

$response = $this->callSecure('GET', 'foo/bar');

Note: Route filters are disabled when in the testing environment. To enable them, add Route::enableFilters() to your test.

DOM Crawler

You may also call a route and receive a DOM Crawler instance that you may use to inspect the content:

$crawler = $this->client->request('GET', '/');

$this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());

$this->assertCount(1, $crawler->filter('h1:contains("Hello World!")'));

For more information on how to use the crawler, refer to its official documentation.

Mocking Facades

When testing, you may often want to mock a call to a Laravel static facade. For example, consider the following controller action:

public function getIndex()
{
	Event::fire('foo', array('name' => 'Dayle'));

	return 'All done!';
}

We can mock the call to the Event class by using the shouldReceive method on the facade, which will return an instance of a Mockery mock.

Mocking A Facade

public function testGetIndex()
{
	Event::shouldReceive('fire')->once()->with('foo', array('name' => 'Dayle'));

	$this->call('GET', '/');
}

Note: You should not mock the Request facade. Instead, pass the input you desire into the call method when running your test.

Framework Assertions

Laravel ships with several assert methods to make testing a little easier:

Asserting Responses Are OK

public function testMethod()
{
	$this->call('GET', '/');

	$this->assertResponseOk();
}

Asserting Response Statuses

$this->assertResponseStatus(403);

Asserting Responses Are Redirects

$this->assertRedirectedTo('foo');

$this->assertRedirectedToRoute('route.name');

$this->assertRedirectedToAction('Controller@method');

Asserting A View Has Some Data

public function testMethod()
{
	$this->call('GET', '/');

	$this->assertViewHas('name');
	$this->assertViewHas('age', $value);
}

Asserting The Session Has Some Data

public function testMethod()
{
	$this->call('GET', '/');

	$this->assertSessionHas('name');
	$this->assertSessionHas('age', $value);
}

Asserting The Session Has Errors

public function testMethod()
{
    $this->call('GET', '/');

    $this->assertSessionHasErrors();

    // Asserting the session has errors for a given key...
    $this->assertSessionHasErrors('name');

    // Asserting the session has errors for several keys...
    $this->assertSessionHasErrors(array('name', 'age'));
}

Asserting Old Input Has Some Data

public function testMethod()
{
	$this->call('GET', '/');

	$this->assertHasOldInput();
}

Helper Methods

The TestCase class contains several helper methods to make testing your application easier.

Setting And Flushing Sessions From Tests

$this->session(['foo' => 'bar']);

$this->flushSession();

Setting The Currently Authenticated User

You may set the currently authenticated user using the be method:

$user = new User(array('name' => 'John'));

$this->be($user);

You may re-seed your database from a test using the seed method:

Re-Seeding Database From Tests

$this->seed();

$this->seed('DatabaseSeeder');

More information on creating seeds may be found in the migrations and seeding section of the documentation.

Refreshing The Application

As you may already know, you can access your Laravel Application / IoC Container via $this->app from any test method. This Application instance is refreshed for each test class. If you wish to manually force the Application to be refreshed for a given method, you may use the refreshApplication method from your test method. This will reset any extra bindings, such as mocks, that have been placed in the IoC container since the test case started running.