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.
An example test file is provided in the 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 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 callparent::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.
The testing
environment variables may be configured in the phpunit.xml
file.
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, $cookies, $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', ['user' => 1]);
Note: You do not need to specify the full controller namespace when using the
action
method. Only specify the portion of the class name that follows theApp\Http\Controllers
namespace.
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');
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', ['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', ['name' => 'Dayle']);
$this->call('GET', '/');
}
Note: You should not mock the
Request
facade. Instead, pass the input you desire into thecall
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(['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(['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 Application (service container) via $this->app
from any test method. This service container 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.