Lessons Learnt: PHPUnit for Beginners
3 min readJul 9, 2020
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I took the course PHPUnit for Beginners by Laravel Daily. It is suitable for total testing beginners and walks you through a simple CRUD application.
Here are my takeaways in the format of question and answer. They are sorted by occurence in the course but you can use whatever you need for your application and testing — not everything is related to testing:
Why choose @forelse … @empty … @endforelse for loops?
It covers the case where there is no data
How to create content with custom values with Eloquent
How to setup test database?
phpunit.xmloverwrites.env.testing- Edit
DB_CONNECTIONforMySQL/sqlite - Change value of
DB_DATABASEintovalue=":memory:"to get fast in memory store
What does RefreshDatabase trait do?
- It Runs migrations
- Creates a fresh database
- Usage
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;above classuse RefreshDatabase;in class, not single test
When should you use a MySQL test database?
- When you use raw MySQL statements for the following features:
- Date formatting
- String functions
- Date differences
- Geospatial features
How to set up a MySQL test database in phpunit.xml?
<server name="DB_CONNECTION" value="MySQL"/><server name="DB_DATABASE" value="name_of_db"/>
Why to test data and not visuals (assertSee)?
- To avoid false positives because of incomplete results
- Example
- Blade: show product name
{{ $product->name }} - Data:
['name' => 'Product 1000] - Visual test:
$response->assertSee('Product 1')would turn green and create a false positive
How to get view data of e.g. $products to test?
What do unit tests capture?
- Internal logic
- No Endpoint
- Data processing
How to create a Laravel service to translate currency
- Create service in
app\services->CurrencyService.php - Import using
use App\Services\CurrencyService - Call
new CurrencyService()->convert(); - No changes in database needed
How to create temporary database/accessor field (e.g. dynamic price in another currency)?
- This is also called accessor
- On model
Product.php
How to create an unit test?
art make:test NAME --unit
How to paginate in controller and view?
- (In Controller):
$products = Product::paginate(10); - In View:
{{ $products->links() }}
How to call factories?
factory(Product::class, 10)->create();
How to echo variable result into log?
- Call
info($var)in your code
How to test if login works?
- Create user
- Post login data and set response
How to quickly log in for tests?
$this->actingAs($user)->get('/')
How to protect a route via auth?
Route::get('/')->middleware('auth')
Easiest way to add admin?
- Add field to user model:
is_admin - Add to fillable in model
- Create middleware
app\Http\Middleware\IsAdmin(see following snippet) - Add middleware to
App\Kernel - Add middleware to your route
Route::middleware('auth', 'is_admin')
Which visual assertions are usual?
$response->assertSee()$response->assertDontSee()
How to create simple factory states?
- Example:
is_admin, yes/no - Create private function with factory and optional parameter in it
How to store everything you get via form?
How to test a POST request with parameter name = 'Test 1'?
$this->post('products', ['name' => 'Test 1', 'price' => 99.99]);
How to assert that something is in the database? (db side)
$this->assertDatabaseHas('products', ['name' => 'Test 1', 'price' => 99.99]);
How to test whether saved data gets returned?
$product = Product::orderBy('id', 'desc')->first();$this->assertEquals('String', $product->name);$this->assertEquals('price', $product->price);
How to check whether data for edit is available in view?
$product = Product::first();$response->assertSee('value="' . $product->price . '"');
How to update all data from a request?
Where and how to create a form request?
app/Http/Requests/UpdateProductRequest.php
How to test an update request?
$response = $this->put('/products/' . $product->id, ['name' => 'Test']);
How to test for session error on ‘name’?
$response->assertSessionHasErrors(['name']);
