Unit Test Laravel's FormRequest

Question 1

I am trying to unit test various custom FormRequest inputs. I found solutions that:

Suggest using the $this->call(…) method and assert the response with the expected value (link to answer). This is overkill, because it creates a direct dependency on Routing and Controllers.
Taylor’s test, from the Laravel Framework found in tests/Foundation/FoundationFormRequestTest.php. There is a lot of mocking and overhead done there.

I am looking for a solution where I can unit test individual field inputs against the rules (independent of other fields in the same request).

Sample FormRequest:

public function rules()
{
    return [
        'first_name' => 'required|between:2,50|alpha',
        'last_name'  => 'required|between:2,50|alpha',
        'email'      => 'required|email|unique:users,email',
        'username'   => 'required|between:6,50|alpha_num|unique:users,username',
        'password'   => 'required|between:8,50|alpha_num|confirmed',
    ];
}

Desired Test:

public function testFirstNameField()
{
   // assertFalse, required
   // ...

   // assertTrue, required
   // ...

   // assertFalse, between
   // ...
}

public function testLastNameField()
{
    // ...
}

How can I unit test (assert) each validation rule of every field in isolation and individually?

Question 2

I found a good solution on Laracast and added some customization to the mix.

The Code

public function setUp()
{
    parent::setUp();
    $this->rules     = (new UserStoreRequest())->rules();
    $this->validator = $this->app['validator'];
}

/** @test */
public function valid_first_name()
{
    $this->assertTrue($this->validateField('first_name', 'jon'));
    $this->assertTrue($this->validateField('first_name', 'jo'));
    $this->assertFalse($this->validateField('first_name', 'j'));
    $this->assertFalse($this->validateField('first_name', ''));
    $this->assertFalse($this->validateField('first_name', '1'));
    $this->assertFalse($this->validateField('first_name', 'jon1'));
}

protected function getFieldValidator($field, $value)
{
    return $this->validator->make(
        [$field => $value], 
        [$field => $this->rules[$field]]
    );
}

protected function validateField($field, $value)
{
    return $this->getFieldValidator($field, $value)->passes();
}

Update

There is an e2e approach to the same problem. You can POST the data to be checked to the route in question and then see if the response contains session errors.

$response = $this->json('POST', 
    '/route_in_question', 
    ['first_name' => 'S']
);
$response->assertSessionHasErrors(['first_name');

Question 3

Not sure datatype is the right kind of test but anyway

The key thing to remember is you need to have a different database for testing my case I use memory so my phpunit.xml looks like the following

<env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>
<env name="CACHE_DRIVER" value="array"/>
<env name="SESSION_DRIVER" value="array"/>
<env name="QUEUE_DRIVER" value="sync"/>
<env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite"/>
<env name="DB_DATABASE" value=":memory:"/>

The you will have your test class. In your case I would call it CarTest.php

<?php 

namespace TestsUnit;

use IlluminateFoundationTestingDatabaseTransactions;
use TestsTestCase;


class CarTest extends TestCase {

    use DatabaseTransactions;
    
   
    
    public function testCarYearDataType()
    {
    
     //just create 1 car as all the cars will have same data type anyway
      factory(AppCar::class)->create(); 

       this->assertInternalType('int', gettype(Car::first()->year));
    }
}

Question 4

I assume you need to simulate a request without actually dispatching it. With a simulated request in place, you want to probe it for parameter values and develop your testcase.

There's an undocumented way to do this. You'll be surprised!

The problem

As you already know, Laravel's IlluminateHttpRequest class builds upon SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationRequest. The upstream class does not allow you to setup a request URI manually in a setRequestUri() way. It figures it out based on the actual request headers. No other way around.

OK, enough with the chatter. Let's try to simulate a request:

<?php

use IlluminateHttpRequest;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $request = new Request([], [], ['info' => 5]);

        dd($request->route()->parameter('info'));
    }
}

As you mentioned yourself, you'll get a:

Error: Call to a member function parameter() on null

We need a `Route`

Why is that? Why route() returns null?

Have a look at its implementation as well as the implementation of its companion method; getRouteResolver(). The getRouteResolver() method returns an empty closure, then route() calls it and so the $route variable will be null. Then it gets returned and thus... the error.

In a real HTTP request context, Laravel sets up its route resolver, so you won't get such errors. Now that you're simulating the request, you need to set up that by yourself. Let's see how.

<?php

use IlluminateHttpRequest;
use IlluminateRoutingRoute;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $request = new Request([], [], ['info' => 5]);

        $request->setRouteResolver(function () use ($request) {
            return (new Route('GET', 'testing/{info}', []))->bind($request);
        });

        dd($request->route()->parameter('info'));
    }
}

See another example of creating Routes from Laravel's own RouteCollection class.

Empty parameters bag

So, now you won't get that error because you actually have a route with the request object bound to it. But it won't work yet. If we run phpunit at this point, we'll get a null in the face! If you do a dd($request->route()) you'll see that even though it has the info parameter name set up, its parameters array is empty:

IlluminateRoutingRoute {#250
  #uri: "testing/{info}"
  #methods: array:2 [
    0 => "GET"
    1 => "HEAD"
  ]
  #action: array:1 [
    "uses" => null
  ]
  #controller: null
  #defaults: []
  #wheres: []
  #parameters: [] <===================== HERE
  #parameterNames: array:1 [
    0 => "info"
  ]
  #compiled: SymfonyComponentRoutingCompiledRoute {#252
    -variables: array:1 [
      0 => "info"
    ]
    -tokens: array:2 [
      0 => array:4 [
        0 => "variable"
        1 => "/"
        2 => "[^/]++"
        3 => "info"
      ]
      1 => array:2 [
        0 => "text"
        1 => "/testing"
      ]
    ]
    -staticPrefix: "/testing"
    -regex: "#^/testing/(?P<info>[^/]++)$#s"
    -pathVariables: array:1 [
      0 => "info"
    ]
    -hostVariables: []
    -hostRegex: null
    -hostTokens: []
  }
  #router: null
  #container: null
}

So passing that ['info' => 5] to Request constructor has no effect whatsoever. Let's have a look at the Route class and see how its $parameters property is getting populated.

When we bind the request object to the route, the $parameters property gets populated by a subsequent call to the bindParameters() method which in turn calls bindPathParameters() to figure out path-specific parameters (we don't have a host parameter in this case).

That method matches request's decoded path against a regex of Symfony's SymfonyComponentRoutingCompiledRoute (You can see that regex in the above dump as well) and returns the matches which are path parameters. It will be empty if the path doesn't match the pattern (which is our case).

/**
 * Get the parameter matches for the path portion of the URI.
 *
 * @param  IlluminateHttpRequest  $request
 * @return array
 */
protected function bindPathParameters(Request $request)
{
    preg_match($this->compiled->getRegex(), '/'.$request->decodedPath(), $matches);
    return $matches;
}

The problem is that when there's no actual request, that $request->decodedPath() returns / which does not match the pattern. So the parameters bag will be empty, no matter what.

Spoofing the request URI

If you follow that decodedPath() method on the Request class, you'll go deep through a couple of methods which will finally return a value from prepareRequestUri() of SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationRequest. There, exactly in that method, you'll find the answer to your question.

It's figuring out the request URI by probing a bunch of HTTP headers. It first checks for X_ORIGINAL_URL, then X_REWRITE_URL, then a few others and finally for the REQUEST_URI header. You can set either of these headers to actually spoof the request URI and achieve minimum simulation of a http request. Let's see.

<?php

use IlluminateHttpRequest;
use IlluminateRoutingRoute;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $request = new Request([], [], [], [], [], ['REQUEST_URI' => 'testing/5']);

        $request->setRouteResolver(function () use ($request) {
            return (new Route('GET', 'testing/{info}', []))->bind($request);
        });

        dd($request->route()->parameter('info'));
    }
}

To your surprise, it prints out 5; the value of info parameter.

Cleanup

You might want to extract the functionality to a helper simulateRequest() method, or a SimulatesRequests trait which can be used across your test cases.

Mocking

Even if it was absolutely impossible to spoof the request URI like the approach above, you could partially mock the request class and set your expected request URI. Something along the lines of:

<?php

use IlluminateHttpRequest;
use IlluminateRoutingRoute;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{

    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $requestMock = Mockery::mock(Request::class)
            ->makePartial()
            ->shouldReceive('path')
            ->once()
            ->andReturn('testing/5');

        app()->instance('request', $requestMock->getMock());

        $request = request();

        $request->setRouteResolver(function () use ($request) {
            return (new Route('GET', 'testing/{info}', []))->bind($request);
        });

        dd($request->route()->parameter('info'));
    }
}

This prints out 5 as well.

Question 5

If you are using NUnit 2.5.7 / 2.6 you can use the TestContext class:

[Test]
public void ShouldRegisterThenVerifyEmailThenSignInSuccessfully()
{
    string testMethodName = TestContext.CurrentContext.Test.Name;
}

Question 6

You can create create a base testClase class that inherits from Laravel's TestCase and only your Functional suite classes can inherit the new one, and in your new class add this :

/**
 * Creates the application.
 *
 * @return IlluminateFoundationApplication
 */
public function createApplication()
{
    return self::initialize();
}

private static $configurationApp = null;
public static function initialize(){

    if(is_null(self::$configurationApp)){
        $app = require __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';

        $app->loadEnvironmentFrom('.env.testing');

        $app->make(IlluminateContractsConsoleKernel::class)->bootstrap();

        if (config('database.default') == 'sqlite') {
            $db = app()->make('db');
            $db->connection()->getPdo()->exec("pragma foreign_keys=1");
        }

        Artisan::call('migrate');
        Artisan::call('db:seed');

        self::$configurationApp = $app;
        return $app;
    }

    return self::$configurationApp;
}

public function tearDown()
{
    if ($this->app) {
        foreach ($this->beforeApplicationDestroyedCallbacks as $callback) {
            call_user_func($callback);
        }

    }

    $this->setUpHasRun = false;

    if (property_exists($this, 'serverVariables')) {
        $this->serverVariables = [];
    }

    if (class_exists('Mockery')) {
        Mockery::close();
    }

    $this->afterApplicationCreatedCallbacks = [];
    $this->beforeApplicationDestroyedCallbacks = [];
}

This works even with in memory database, it's 100 times faster.

PS : working for Laravel not Lumen Applications.

Unit Test Laravel's FormRequest

Answers

The problem

We need a `Route`

Empty parameters bag

Spoofing the request URI

Cleanup

Mocking

php,laravel,unit-testing,request,laravel-5.2

Unit Test Laravel's FormRequest

Answers

The problem

We need a Route

Empty parameters bag

Spoofing the request URI

Cleanup

Mocking

php,laravel,unit-testing,request,laravel-5.2

We need a `Route`