Testing

Introduction

Writing testable code is an important part of building a robust, maintainable, and agile project. Support for PHP’s most widely used testing framework, PHPUnit, is built right into Laravel. PHPUnit is configured using the phpunit.xml file, which resides in the root directory of every new Laravel application.

The tests directory, also in the root directory, contains the individual testing files which hold the logic for testing each portion of your application. Of course, it is your responsibility as a developer to write these tests as you build your application, but Laravel includes an example file, ExampleTest.php, to get you going.

<?php

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithoutMiddleware;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseTransactions;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    /**
     * A basic functional test example.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $this->visit('/')
             ->see('Laravel 5');
    }
}

In the testBasicExample() method, we visit the site’s index page and make sure we see the text Laravel 5 somewhere on that page. If the text is not present, the test will fail and generate an error.

Test without middleware and with a fresh database

To make artisan migrate a fresh database before running tests, use DatabaseMigrations. Also if you want to avoid middleware like Auth, use WithoutMiddleware.

<?php

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithoutMiddleware;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    use DatabaseMigrations, WithoutMiddleware;

    /**
     * A basic functional test example.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function testExampleIndex()
    {
        $this->visit('/protected-page')
         ->see('All good');
    }
}

Database transactions for mutliple database connection

DatabaseTransactions trait allows databases to rollback all the change during the tests. If you want to rollback multiple databases , you need to set $connectionsToTransact properties

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
     use DatabaseTransactions;

     $connectionsToTransact =["mysql","sqlite"] //tell Laravel which database need to rollBack

    public function testExampleIndex()
    {
        $this->visit('/action/parameter')
         ->see('items');
    }
}

Testing setup, using in memory database

Following setup ensures that testing framework (PHPUnit) uses :memory: database.

config/database.php

'connections' => [

    'sqlite_testing' => [
        'driver'   => 'sqlite',
        'database' => ':memory:',
        'prefix'   => '',
    ],
    .
    .
    .

./phpunit.xml

    .
    .
    .
    </filter>
    <php>
        <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>
        <env name="APP_URL" value="https://example.dev"/>
        <env name="CACHE_DRIVER" value="array"/>
        <env name="SESSION_DRIVER" value="array"/>
        <env name="QUEUE_DRIVER" value="sync"/>
        <env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite_testing"/>
    </php>
</phpunit>

Configuration

The phpunit.xml file is the default configuration file for tests and is already setup for testing with PHPUnit.

The default testing environment APP_ENV is defined as testing with array being the cache driver CACHE_DRIVER. With this setup, no data (session/cache) will be retained while testing.

To run tests against a specific environment like homestead the defaults can be changed to:

<env name="DB_HOST" value="192.168.10.10"/>
<env name="DB_DATABASE" value="homestead"/>
<env name="DB_USERNAME" value="homestead"/>
<env name="DB_PASSWORD" value="secret"/>

Or to use a temporary in memory database:

<env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite"/>
<env name="DB_DATABASE" value=":memory:"/>

One last note to keep in mind from the Laravel documentation:

Make sure to clear your configuration cache using the config:clear Artisan command before running your tests!