ch10-testing-controllers.md

Ch10: Testing Controllers

NOTE: super important

Testing Controllers

Controller tests should verify responses, ensure that the correct database access methods are triggered, and assert that the appropriate instance variables are sent to the view.

What Does a Controller Do?

1. Direct traffic, by serving as the application’s HTTP interface.
2. Send its own messages to the domain object. As they say, controllers should tell, rather than ask (Fat Model -> Skinny Controller).

The Hello World of Controller Testing

that’s only partially true. Even though $this->call() and $this->client->request() will both call a particular route, the returned values will differ.

$crawler = $this->client->request('GET', '/'); // Symfony\Component\DomCrawler\Crawler

$response = $this->call('GET', '/'); // Illuminate\Http\Response

Laravel’s Helper Assertions

• assertViewHas
• assertResponseOk
• assertRedirectedTo
• assertRedirectedToRoute
• assertRedirectedToAction
• assertSessionHas
• assertSessionHasErrors

The following examples calls GET /posts and verifies that its views receives the variable, $posts.

public function testIndex() { $this->call('GET', 'posts');

$this->assertViewHas('posts');

}

Note: typo in p.134 in line 5 of Route::get('posts',function()

=> replace ['posts', $posts] to ['posts' => $posts]

Mocking the Database

The solution is to inject the database layer into the controller through the constructor.

Note:

issue "Class 'Eloquent' not found when using Mockery::mock('Eloquent', 'Post')"

The IoC Container

Laravel’s IoC container drastically eases the process of injecting dependencies into your classes. Each time a controller is requested, it is resolved out of the IoC container.

$this->app->instance('Post', $this->mock);

Think of this code as saying, “Hey Laravel, when you need an instance of Post, I want you to use my mocked version.”

Path

Note:

issue "Input::replace not working with $this->call"

Repositories

To allow for optimal flexibility, rather than creating a direct link between your controller and an ORM, like Eloquent, it’s better to code to an interface.

The considerable advantage to this approach is that, should you perhaps need to swap out Eloquent for, say, Mongo or Redis, doing so literally requires the modification of a single line. Even better, the controller doesn’t ever need to be touched.

Repositories represent the data access layer of your application.

Structure

PSR-0 defines the mandatory requirements that must be adhered to for autoloader interoperability.

Service providers are nothing more than bootstrap classes that can be used to do anything you wish: register a binding, hook into an event, import a routes file, etc.

Crawling the DOM

When requesting a URI with $this->client->request(), a Crawler object will be returned, which can then be used to filter the DOM and perform assertions.

Ensure View Contains Text

public function testLogin()
{
    $crawler = $this->client->request('GET', '/login');
    $h1 = $crawler->filter('h1');

    $this->assertEquals('Please Login', $h1->text());
}

In the example above, the assertion will only pass if the first occurrence of an

tag contains Please Login.

the assertion could be rewritten, like so:

$h1 = $crawler->filter('h1:contains("HelloWorld!")');
$this->assertCount(1, $h1);

Fetch By Position

$crawler->filter('h2')->eq(2);

Fetch First or Last

$crawler->filter('ul.tasks li')->first();
$crawler->filter('ul.tasks li')->last();

Fetch Siblings

$crawler->filter('.question')->siblings();

Fetch Children

$crawler->filter('ul.tasks')->children();

Capture Text Content

html example:

<ulclass="tasks">
    <li>Go to store</li>
    <li>Finish book</li>
    <li>Eat dinner</li>
</ul>

extract the text content for each.

//Call route
$crawler=$this->client->request('GET', '/tasks');

//Filter down to the desired list
$items=$crawler->filter('ul.tasks li');

//Map over of the list,and return
//the text content for each.
$tasks=$items->each(function($node, $i)
{
    return $node->text();
});

if we var_dump($tasks):

array(3) {
    [0] => string(11) "Go to store",
    [1] => string(11) "Finish book",
    [2] => string(10) "Eat dinner"
}

rather than mapping over the list items with each(), we can instead clean things up a bit, like so:

$items=$crawler->filter('ul.tasks li');
$tasks=$items->extract('_text');

If you need to grab a different attribute value from a node, simply substitute _text with its name

$className=$node->extract('class');
$id=$node->extract('id');
$idAndClass=$node->extract(['id','class']);

Forms

(DomCrawler) the ability to fill out and submit forms.

public function testRegister()
{
    $crawler = $this->client->request('GET', '/register');

    // Find the form associated with the submit button
    // that has a value of 'Submit'
    $form = $crawler->selectButton('Submit')->form();

    // Fill out the form
    $form['first'] = 'Jeffrey';
    $form['last'] = 'Way';

    // Submit the form
    $r = $this->client->submit($form);
}