Introduction To Test Driven Design (TDD) Laravel Framework

Overview

This post is aimed at introducing Test Driven Design in Laravel Framework, configuring and setup of a test environment, common practices & dealing with Laravel default exception handling behavior. For this purpose, we would build a simple blog.

What Will I Learn?

• Steps to achieve Test Driven Design
• Configure and write unit test in Laravel Framework
• Using Laravel factory to seed fake data
• Disable/Override exception handling while running test

Requirements

• Basic knowledge of Laravel framework is required.

• For this tutorial we would be using Laravel version 5.5 and it requires the following to be installed on your machine:

  • PHP >= 7.0.0
  • OpenSSL PHP Extension
  • PDO PHP Extension
  • Mbstring PHP Extension
  • Tokenizer PHP Extension
  • XML PHP Extension

• You must also have composer installed, you can find out how to install composer for your machine here.

Difficulty

Basic

Setup

This setup assumes you are using a Linux machine. By now you must have installed PHP with its required dependecies & composer installed.

To install Laravel version 5.5, navigate to you web directory. In my case /var/www/html and run command composer create-project laravel/laravel practical-testing "5.5.*" --prefer-dist where practical-testing is your project name, you can change that to whatever you want.

Now Laravel project should be completely setup, navigate into the project directory in your terminal and run php artisan --version to see the currently installed Laravel version is 5.5.4.

Wait What Is TDD(Test Driven Design)

Using Wikipedia Definition:

Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: requirements are turned into very specific test cases, then the software is improved to pass the new tests, only.

Life Cycle Of TDD

The life cycle of writing a TDD code which we would also be following includes

1. Add a test
2. Run all tests and see if the new test fail
3. Write the code
4. Run Tests
5. Refactor Code

Building & Testing Our Blog

Open the project in your prefered editor, edit the phpunit.xml in the root directory and on line 25 add the following snippet

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

We are setting the the connection to sqlite and database to memory when we are in test environment. This way tests that read or write to the database runs faster and after each test the data is not persisted.

Next create a database with name practical_testing any mysql client of your choice, phpmyadmin or similar will do just fine.

Update your .env file with your DB_DATABASE , DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD. Now run php artisan migrate to run the users migration. If you open database/factories/UserFactory.php file in your editor you should see the model factory for User Model defined there by default, as we proceed into the tutorial we would add one more for the Blog Model, but now open your terminal and run

php artisan tinker

//You should be presented with a response similar to this
Psy Shell v0.8.18 (PHP 7.***** — cli) by Justin Hileman

If you have not tried laravel tinker before now is the time, what this allows us to do is run php codes on the terminal to interact with our laravel project. What we want to achieve here is to create three fake users using our defined user model. Now run the following commands from terminal right from your project directory

//Set default namespace to App. 
//We can do User instead of App\User
namespace App

//Second Code
factory(User::class,3)->create()

Run User::all() you should get a list of all three users. Now you understand what factory does and how it can be used.

Create our blog table, by running php artisan make:migration create_blogs_table --create=blogs from the terminal.

Update the up method in the migration file with the below schema

Schema::create('blogs', function (Blueprint $table) {  
  $table->increments('id');  
  $table->unsignedInteger('user_id')->references('id')->on('users');  
  $table->string('title');  
  $table->longText('body');  
  $table->timestamps();  
});

Run php artisan migrate to create table.

Important Note: As we procced into this tutoral if running phpunit gives you issue, you can instead run vendor/bin/phpunit or better still create an alias punit for vendor/bin/phpunit, that way you can always run punit on every of your Laravel project.

Lets Get Testing

First we test if we can successfully create a blog post. Remember lifecycle of TTD expects us to write our test to fail before we write the code and make the test pass.
Run command php artisan make:test CreatePostTest to create a test file. Check the tests/Feature folder the newly created test file would be there, next we add our first test

/**  
 * @test  
  */  
public function a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post()  
{  
  $response = $this->get('post/create');  
  
  $response->assertSuccessful();  
}

If you run the test by executing phpunit from the terminal, it will fail with error

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

F                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 132 ms, Memory: 10.00MB

There was 1 failure:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
Response status code [404] is not a successful status code.
Failed asserting that false is true.

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/TestResponse.php:60
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:18

FAILURES!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 1, Failures: 1.

because the route to create a post does not exist yet, now add this line to web.php to create the route

Route::get('/post/create','PostController@create');

then run the test again, now the test will fail again with error

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

F                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 119 ms, Memory: 14.00MB

There was 1 failure:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
Response status code [500] is not a successful status code.
Failed asserting that false is true.

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/TestResponse.php:60
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:18

FAILURES!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 1, Failures: 1.

But wait a minute from the fail test above we can't debug exactly what is causing the test to fail, except for the fact that we know we don't have a PostController yet. This is due to the way laravel handles exception, we can simply fix that by replacing the /tests/TestCase.php with

<?php  
  
namespace Tests;  
  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase as BaseTestCase;  
use Illuminate\Contracts\Debug\ExceptionHandler;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Exceptions\Handler;  
  
abstract class TestCase extends BaseTestCase  
{  
  use CreatesApplication;  
  
  protected function setUp()  
  {  
    parent::setUp();  
    $this->disableExceptionHandling();    
  }  
 
  protected function disableExceptionHandling()  
  {  
  $this->oldExceptionHandler = $this->app->make(ExceptionHandler::class);  
  $this->app->instance(ExceptionHandler::class, new class extends Handler {  
  public function __construct() {}  
  public function report(\Exception $e) {}  
  public function render($request, \Exception $e) {  
  throw $e;  
   } 
  }); 
 }
    
  protected function withExceptionHandling()  
  {  
  $this->app->instance(ExceptionHandler::class, $this->oldExceptionHandler);  
  return $this;  
  }
 }

Credit of the above code goes to Adam Watham

The code above ensures that before any test is executed the default exception handler is overidden. If you which to use the default exception handling behaviour instead just call $this->withExceptionHandling() in your test.

Now if you run phpunit you will presented with a detailed error log

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

E                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 86 ms, Memory: 10.00MB

There was 1 error:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
ReflectionException: Class App\Http\Controllers\PostController does not exist

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:752
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:631
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:586
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php:732
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php:226
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php:796
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Route.php:757
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:671
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:651
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:635
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:601
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:590
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:176
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/fideloper/proxy/src/TrustProxies.php:56
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/ValidatePostSize.php:27
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/CheckForMaintenanceMode.php:46
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:102
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:151
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:116
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:345
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:168
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:16

ERRORS!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 0, Errors: 1.

Now we are armed with a powerful way to debug our test.

Create a PostController by running command php artisan make:controller PostController then open the file and update it with the create method

public function create()  
{  
  return view('welcome');  
}

The welcome.blade.php already exist when you installed laravel, now run phpunit once again. Good our test will pass now

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

.                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 242 ms, Memory: 10.00MB

OK (1 test, 1 assertion)

Now lets write test that fails to see if can post data to this url and the data is saved into database. But first we need to create Blog model and factory, run php artisan make:model Blog and add below snippet at the end of database/factories/UserFactory.php

$factory->define(\App\Blog::class,function (Faker $faker) {  
  return [  
  'user_id' => function(){ return (factory(\App\User::class)->create())->id; },  
  'title' => $faker->sentence(),  
  'body' => $faker->sentence(100),  
 ];});

Now update your test code with this

/**  
 * @test  
  */  
public function a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post()  
{  
  $response = $this->get('post/create');  
  
  $response->assertSuccessful();  
  
  //Note the use of make() & not create()
  //difference is make does not persist data
  //into database unlike create
  $data = (factory(Blog::class)->make())->toArray();  
  
  $this->post('post/create',$data);  
  
  $this->assertDatabaseHas('blogs',$data);
}

What we have done right now is write a test on how our code should behave, run phpunit

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

E                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 82 ms, Memory: 14.00MB

There was 1 error:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
Illuminate\Database\QueryException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such table: users (SQL: insert into "users" ("name", "email", "password", "remember_token", "updated_at", "created_at") values (Dennis Quitzon, [email protected], $2y$10$TKh8H1.PfQx37YgCzwiKb.KjNyWgaHb9cbcoQgdIVFlYg7B77UdFm, pAixCXGUKO, 2018-04-15 10:57:21, 2018-04-15 10:57:21))

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:664
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:624
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:459
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:411
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Processors/Processor.php:32
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Builder.php:2159
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Builder.php:1285
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:722
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:687
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:550
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:172
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Support/Collection.php:339
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:173
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:151
/var/www/html/practical-testing/database/factories/UserFactory.php:27
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:317
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:232
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:252
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Concerns/GuardsAttributes.php:122
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:260
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:185
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:21

Caused by
PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such table: users

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:452
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:657
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:624
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:459
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php:411
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Processors/Processor.php:32
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Builder.php:2159
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Builder.php:1285
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:722
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:687
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:550
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:172
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Support/Collection.php:339
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:173
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:151
/var/www/html/practical-testing/database/factories/UserFactory.php:27
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:317
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:232
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:252
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Concerns/GuardsAttributes.php:122
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:260
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/FactoryBuilder.php:185
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:21

ERRORS!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 1, Errors: 1.

Remember we configured phpunit to use sqlite, so everytime we run our test no data is persisted. Laravel provides a trait DatabaseMigrations that runs migration everytime you run a test. Add this statement to the top the file use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;

Your test file should look exactly like this now

<?php  
  
namespace Tests\Feature;  
  
use App\Blog;  
use Tests\TestCase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;  
  
class CreatePostTest extends TestCase  
{  
  use DatabaseMigrations;  
  
 /**  
 * @test  
 */  
 public function a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post()  
 {  
  $response = $this->get('post/create');  
  
  $response->assertSuccessful();  
  
  $data = (factory(Blog::class)->make())->toArray();  
  
  $this->post('post/create',$data);  
  
  $this->assertDatabaseHas('blogs',$data);  
 }}

run phpunit, the test will fail with a new error

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

E                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 298 ms, Memory: 16.00MB

There was 1 error:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\MethodNotAllowedHttpException: 

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/RouteCollection.php:255
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/RouteCollection.php:242
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/RouteCollection.php:176
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:612
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:601
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:590
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:176
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/fideloper/proxy/src/TrustProxies.php:56
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/ValidatePostSize.php:27
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/CheckForMaintenanceMode.php:46
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:102
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:151
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:116
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:345
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:195
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:26

ERRORS!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 1, Errors: 1.

The test failed because we have not defined our post route. Lets create the route and the controller method to save the post, also in-between create a unit test to check the method that would handle how it save the data from the model.

Add this line to your web.php file

Route::post('/post/create','PostController@store');

Also this method to your PostController

public function store(Request $request,Blog $blog)  
{  
  $blog->addPost($request->all());  
  
  return response(200);  
}

Notice a method addPost that does not already exist on the Blog Model. Now we to write a unit test to create that method. run php artisan make:test NewPostTest --unit

Navigate to the Unit folder in your test folder open NewPostTest.php file and paste this in there

<?php  
  
namespace Tests\Unit;  
  
use App\Blog;  
use Tests\TestCase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;  
  
class NewPostTest extends TestCase  
{  
  use DatabaseMigrations;  
  
  /**  
 * @test  
  */  
  public function successfully_add_new_post()  
 {  $post = (factory(Blog::class)->make())->toArray();  
  
 (new Blog())->addNewPost($post);  
  
  $this->assertDatabaseHas('blogs',$post);  
 }}

run phpunit --filter successfully_add_new_post to only execute this single test and not all our tests. As expected this test would fail because we don't have the method addNewPost yet on our model, understand that this test is to specifically unit test the method addNewPost unlike the previous test that is aimed at testing how it functions. Now add the method to Blog model

public function addNewPost($data)  
{  
  return $this->create($data);  
}

Again run phpunit --filter successfully_add_new_post, we would now get an error for mass assignment

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

E                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 131 ms, Memory: 14.00MB

There was 1 error:

1) Tests\Unit\NewPostTest::successfully_add_new_post
Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\MassAssignmentException: user_id

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:232
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:152
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:290
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Builder.php:1068
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Builder.php:756
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:1470
/var/www/html/practical-testing/app/Blog.php:11
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Unit/NewPostTest.php:22

ERRORS!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 0, Errors: 1.

To solve this issue we just have to allow mass assignment for all the fields we always pass on blogs table. Add the below line to your Blog Model

protected $fillable = ['user_id','title','body'];

Now if you run phpunit --filter successfully_add_new_post the test will pass now. We can now go back to our previous test, now if you run phpunit --filter a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post, our test will pass successfully but it staill doesn't satisfy its purpose because we want only logged users to be able to create post. Add middleware auth to the post route

Route::post('/post/create','PostController@store')->middleware('auth');

If you run the test again it will fail with UnAuthenticated error.

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

E                                                                   1 / 1 (100%)

Time: 154 ms, Memory: 16.00MB

There was 1 error:

1) Tests\Feature\CreatePostTest::a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post
Illuminate\Auth\AuthenticationException: Unauthenticated.

/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Auth/GuardHelpers.php:40
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Auth/AuthManager.php:292
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Auth/Middleware/Authenticate.php:57
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Auth/Middleware/Authenticate.php:41
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/VerifyCsrfToken.php:67
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/View/Middleware/ShareErrorsFromSession.php:49
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Session/Middleware/StartSession.php:63
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Cookie/Middleware/AddQueuedCookiesToResponse.php:37
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Cookie/Middleware/EncryptCookies.php:59
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:102
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:660
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:635
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:601
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Router.php:590
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:176
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/fideloper/proxy/src/TrustProxies.php:56
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/TransformsRequest.php:30
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/ValidatePostSize.php:27
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Middleware/CheckForMaintenanceMode.php:46
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:149
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Routing/Pipeline.php:53
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php:102
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:151
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php:116
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:345
/var/www/html/practical-testing/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Testing/Concerns/MakesHttpRequests.php:195
/var/www/html/practical-testing/tests/Feature/CreatePostTest.php:26

ERRORS!
Tests: 1, Assertions: 1, Errors: 1.

So simply update your test to fix it as follows

/**  
* @test  
*/  
public function a_logged_user_can_create_blog_post()  
{  
  $response = $this->get('post/create');  
  
  $response->assertSuccessful();  
  
  $user = factory(User::class)->create();  
  
  $this->actingAs($user);  
  $data = (factory(Blog::class)->make(['user_id' => $user->id]))->toArray();  
  
  $this->post('post/create',$data);  
  
  $this->assertDatabaseHas('blogs',$data);  
}

Run phpunit with no filter both test will pass successfully

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

..                                                                  2 / 2 (100%)

Time: 146 ms, Memory: 16.00MB

OK (2 tests, 3 assertions)

Lets just create two more test to delete a blog post. In this case we just start with the unit test, run commad php artisan make:test DeletePostTest --unit then update its content with

<?php  
  
namespace Tests\Unit;  
  
use App\Blog;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;  
use Tests\TestCase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;  
  
class DeletePostTest extends TestCase  
{  
  use DatabaseMigrations;  
  
    /**  
    * @test  
    */  
    public function successfully_delete_post()  
    {  
      factory(Blog::class,5)->create();  
      
      $model = new Blog();  
      
      $deleted = $model->find(1)->deletePost();  
  
      $this->assertTrue($deleted);
    }
}

If you run command phpunit --filter successfully_delete_post the test will fail because we don't have the method deletePost yet on the Blog Model. Update the Blog Model with the deletePost method.

public function deletePost()  
{  
  return $this->delete();  
}

Now we can go ahead to write functional test, run php artisan make:test UserDeletePostTest. Open the test file add let write the minimum test that should fail

<?php  
  
namespace Tests\Feature;  
  
use App\Blog;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;  
use Tests\TestCase;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;  
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;  
  
class UserDeletePostTest extends TestCase  
{  
  use DatabaseMigrations;  
  
 /**  
 * @test  
 */  
public function an_authenticated_user_can_successfully_delete_its_own_post()  
{  
  $this->actingAs(factory(User::class)->create());  
  
  factory(Blog::class,5)->create();  
  
  $this->delete("post/delete/3");  
  
  $this->assertEquals(Blog::count(),4);  
}

This test will fail because we do not have our route to delete post in place neither is the controller method. Now lets take care of both

Update route

Route::delete('/post/delete/{blog}','PostController@destroy')->middleware('auth');

Update your controller with destroy method

public function destroy(Blog $blog)  
{  
  $blog->deletePost();  
  
  return response(200);  
}

Now run phpunit all 4 tests will pass now

PHPUnit 6.5.8 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

....                                                                4 / 4 (100%)

Time: 136 ms, Memory: 16.00MB

OK (4 tests, 5 assertions)

You can clone the repository containing code to this tutorial from here.

Happy TDD

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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