Laravel Project Testing Using PHPunit

PHPunit is the unit testing for PHP. This is primarily designed for unit testing, where developers should be able to find mistakes quickly in their newly committed code and assert that no code regression has occurred in other parts of the code base. PHPunit includes a lot of simple and flexible assertions that allow you to easily test your code. Basically, the goal of unit testing is to isolate each part of the program and show that the individual parts are correct.

Testing In Laravel

Laravel is built with testing in mind. Basically, Laravel will give you PHPUnit as a testing tool out of the box. By default, the phpunit.xml file is already set up for your application. In Laravel project, under the “tests” directories contains “Feature” and “Unit” directory. Where Feature tests focus on larger portion of your code while Unit tests focus on a very small, isolated portion of your code.

Before running the test in your project, you should have cleared the cache or session, means that no session or cache data will be persisted while testing. For clearing the cache or configuration, you can use the artisan command “php artisan cache:clear” or “php artisan config:clear”.
Now, in this article we’ll go through Creating & Running Tests in Laravel.

1. Install Laravel Project

Enter the composer command to install Laravel: composer-project –prefer-dist laravel/laravel LaravelTesting.

2. Creating New Test

2.1. To create a new test case, use the “make:test” artisan command:

Create a test in the Feature directory:
• php artisan make:test NameTest
Create a test in the Unit directory:
• php artisan make:test NameTest –unit

Create a new unit test: php artisan make:test UserModelTest –unit

After running the command, file will be generated under “tests/Unit/” directory. File will be look like this:

3. Running Test

Case1:
After, test has been generated, go to your terminal and run your tests, execute the “./vendor/bin/phpunit” command from your terminal. This will test your 3 files, one is for “Feature/ExampleTest.php” file and two file for “Unit/ExampleTest.php” and “Unit/UserModelTest.php” files.
After execute the command, tests will look like this.
Case2:
Now suppose, we have created one another new unit test file called NewFileTest:
Files will be generated under “tests” directory:
After generated the test file, go to your terminal and run the phpunit command: “./vendor/bin/phpunit”. This will check four files such as “Feature/ExampleTest.php”,“Unit/ExampleTest.php”,“Unit/UserModelTest.php” and “Unit/NewFileTest.php”.
./vendor/bin/phpunit
Case3:
Now, Let’s change the assertion in “tests/Unit/NewFileTest.php” file like this:
After changed and save it, go to your terminal and enter the “./vendor/bin/phpunit” command and you’ll get a failure assertion like this:
There are following PHPUnit test method or assertions and you can use these methods as per your test requirements. To learn about these assertions you can visit this link:
“https://phpunit.readthedocs.io/en/8.3/assertions.html”
Some assertions are like this:

• assertThat()
• assertTrue()
• assertFalse()
• assertDatabaseHas()
• assertStatus()
• assertJson()
• assertNull()
• assertArrayHasKey()
• assertEmpty()
• assertEquals()
• assertFileEquals()
• assertFileExists()
• assertFileReadable()
• assertSame()