Testing laravel controllers with JSON request body - angularjs

Question

I am trying to write a phpunit test for a Laravel controller which expects post requests with a body in JSON format.
A simplified version of the controller:
class Account_Controller extends Base_Controller
{
public $restful = true;
public function post_login()
{
$credentials = Input::json();
return json_encode(array(
'email' => $credentials->email,
'session' => 'random_session_key'
));
}
}
Currently I have a test method which is correctly sending the data as urlencoded form data, but I cannot work out how to send the data as JSON.
My test method (I used the github gist here when writing the test)
class AccountControllerTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {
public function testLogin()
{
$post_data = array(
'email' => 'user#example.com',
'password' => 'example_password'
);
Request::foundation()->server->set('REQUEST_METHOD', 'POST');
Request::foundation()->request->add($post_data);
$response = Controller::call('account#login', $post_data);
//check the $response
}
}
I am using angularjs on the frontend and by default, requests sent to the server are in JSON format. I would prefer not to change this to send a urlencoded form.
Does anyone know how I could write a test method which provides the controller with a JSON encoded body?

Answer 1

In Laravel 5, the call() method has changed:
$this->call(
'PUT',
$url,
[],
[],
[],
['CONTENT_TYPE' => 'application/json'],
json_encode($data_array)
);
I think that Symphony's request() method is being called:
http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/testing.html

Answer 2

This is how I go about doing this in Laravel4
// Now Up-vote something with id 53
$this->client->request('POST', '/api/1.0/something/53/rating', array('rating' => 1) );
// I hope we always get a 200 OK
$this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());
// Get the response and decode it
$jsonResponse = $this->client->getResponse()->getContent();
$responseData = json_decode($jsonResponse);
$responseData will be a PHP object equal to the json response and will allow you to then test the response :)

Answer 3

Here's what worked for me.
$postData = array('foo' => 'bar');
$postRequest = $this->action('POST', 'MyController#myaction', array(), array(), array(), array(), json_encode($postData));
$this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());
That seventh argument to $this->action is content. See docs at http://laravel.com/api/source-class-Illuminate.Foundation.Testing.TestCase.html#_action

Answer 4

There is a lot easier way of doing this. You can simply set Input::$json property to the object you want to send as post parameter. See Sample code below
$data = array(
'name' => 'sample name',
'email' => 'abc#yahoo.com',
);
Input::$json = (object)$data;
Request::setMethod('POST');
$response = Controller::call('client#create');
$this->assertNotNull($response);
$this->assertEquals(200, $response->status());
I hope this helps you with your test cases
Update : The original article is available here http://forums.laravel.io/viewtopic.php?id=2521

Answer 5

A simple solution would be to use CURL - which will then also allow you to capture the 'response' from the server.
class AccountControllerTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{
public function testLogin()
{
$url = "account/login";
$post_data = array(
'email' => 'user#example.com',
'password' => 'example_password'
);
$content = json_encode($post_data);
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array("Content-type: application/json"));
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $content);
$json_response = curl_exec($curl);
$status = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
curl_close($curl);
$response = json_decode($json_response, true);
// Do some $this->Assert() stuff here on the $status
}
}
CURL will actually simulate the raw HTTP post with JSON - so you know you are truly testing your functionality;

Answer 6

As of Laravel 5.1 there is a much easier way to test JSON controllers via PHPunit. Simply pass an array with the data and it'll get encoded automatically.
public function testBasicExample()
{
$this->post('/user', ['name' => 'Sally'])
->seeJson([
'created' => true,
]);
}
From the docs: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/testing#testing-json-apis

Answer 7

Since at least Laravel 5.2 there is a json() method in Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\Concerns\MakesHttpRequests therefore you can do the following:
$data = [
"name" => "Foobar"
];
$response = $this->json('POST', '/endpoint', $data);
Also since Laravel 5.3 there are also convenient methods like putJson(), postJson(), etc. Therefore it can be even shortened further to:
$data = [
"name" => "Foobar"
];
$response = $this->postJson('/endpooint', $data);
And then you can do $response->assertJson(...) like:
$response->assertJson(fn (AssertableJson $json) => $json->hasAll(['id', 'name']));