Introduction
Laravel is built with testing in mind. In fact, support
for testing with PHPUnit is included out of the box and
a phpunit.xml file is already set up for
your application. The framework also ships with
convenient helper methods that allow you to expressively
test your applications.
By default, your application's tests
directory contains two directories: Feature
and Unit. Unit tests are tests that focus
on a very small, isolated portion of your code. In fact,
most unit tests probably focus on a single method.
Feature tests may test a larger portion of your code,
including how several objects interact with each other
or even a full HTTP request to a JSON endpoint.
An ExampleTest.php file is provided in both
the Feature and Unit test
directories. After installing a new Laravel application,
run phpunit on the command line to run your
tests.
Environment
When running tests via phpunit, Laravel will
automatically set the configuration environment to
testing because of the environment
variables defined in the phpunit.xml file.
Laravel also automatically configures the session and
cache to the array driver while testing,
meaning no session or cache data will be persisted while
testing.
You are free to define other testing environment
configuration values as necessary. The
testing environment variables may be
configured in the phpunit.xml file, but
make sure to clear your configuration cache using the
config:clear Artisan command before running
your tests!
In addition, you may create a .env.testing
file in the root of your project. This file will
override the .env file when running PHPUnit
tests or executing Artisan commands with the
--env=testing option.
Creating & Running Tests
To create a new test case, use the make:test
Artisan command:
// Create a test in the Feature directory...
php artisan make:test UserTest
// Create a test in the Unit directory...
php artisan make:test UserTest --unit
Once the test has been generated, you may define test
methods as you normally would using PHPUnit. To run your
tests, execute the phpunit command from
your terminal:
<?php
namespace Tests\Unit;
use Tests\TestCase;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;
class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
/**
* A basic test example.
*
* @return void
*/
public function testBasicTest()
{
$this->assertTrue(true);
}
}
Note: If you define your own
setUp/tearDownmethods within a test class, be sure to call the respectiveparent::setUp()/parent::tearDown()methods on the parent class.