Laravel Trying To Unit Test API JSON Response

Question

Trying to learn too many new things at once here (Laravel, PHPUnit, etc), so this is probably just a tired brain problem, would still appreciate some help.

I have a very basic 'Blog' project using Laravel as the API layer and AngularJS as the front end. I want to unit test the API end-points but I am having trouble figuring out how to process JSON while in my test functions.

When I try to run testGetBlogPosts() I see what looks like the JSON output in my CLI, but I am unable to json_decode() and check that certain parts of the object match my expected result. Here I simply want to make sure that the ID on the first object in the result array is ID "1".

The result I receive from the test is: 1) ExampleTest::testGetBlogPosts ErrorException: Trying to get property of non-object

Any help or suggestions is much appreciated!

TL;DR: Test case is not correctly processing JSON response from API endpoint

Controller

class HomeController extends BaseController {

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Default Home Controller
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | You may wish to use controllers instead of, or in addition to, Closure
    | based routes. That's great! Here is an example controller method to
    | get you started. To route to this controller, just add the route:
    |
    |   Route::get('/', 'HomeController@showWelcome');
    |
    */
    public function showWelcome()
    {
        return View::make('hello');
    }

    public function getBlogPosts()
    {
        $posts = Post::get()->take(5)->toJson();
        // echo $posts; PER THE ACCEPTED ANSWER, RETURN NOT ECHO
        return $posts;
    }
    public function getSinglePost($postId)
    {
        $posts = Post::find($postId)->toJson();
        // echo $posts; PER THE ACCEPTED ANSWER, RETURN NOT ECHO
        return $posts;
    }

}

Test File

class ExampleTest extends TestCase {

    /**
     * A basic functional test example.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function testBasicExample()
    {
        $crawler = $this->client->request('GET', '/');
        $this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());
    }

    public function testGetBlogPosts()
    {
        $response = $this->call('GET', 'api/getBlogPosts');

        $array = json_decode($response);
        $result = false;
        if($array[0]->id == 1)
        {
            $result = true;
        }
        $this->assertEquals(true, $result);
    }
}

As requested, the full test output

root@homestead:/home/vagrant/Laravel/Homestead/Blog# phpunit PHPUnit 3.7.28 by Sebastian Bergmann.

Configuration read from /home/vagrant/Laravel/Homestead/Blog/phpunit.xml

.E[{"id":"1","user_id":"1","title":"This is a test post","post_body":"testststs","created_at":"2014-08-07 19:26:26","updated_at":"2014-08-07 19:26:26"},{"id":"2","user_id":"75","title":"Libero rerum rem praesentium et et at doloribus asperiores.","post_body":"Commodi aut beatae aut veritatis eum soluta sint. In aut cumque iure quis.","created_at":"2014-08-07 19:26:26","updated_at":"2014-08-07 19:26:26"}]

Time: 1.85 seconds, Memory: 18.50Mb

There was 1 error:

1) ExampleTest::testGetBlogPosts ErrorException: Trying to get property of non-object

/home/vagrant/Laravel/Homestead/Blog/app/tests/ExampleTest.php:22

FAILURES! Tests: 2, Assertions: 1, Errors: 1.

If I go to this endpoint in a browser I get this

[
{
id: 1,
user_id: 1,
title: "This is a test post",
subtitle: "",
post_body: "testststs",
created_at: "2014-08-07 19:26:04",
updated_at: "2014-08-07 19:26:04"
},
{
id: 2,
user_id: 18,
title: "Rem deserunt dolor odit tempore qui eaque labore.",
subtitle: "",
post_body: "Ea a adipisci molestiae vel dignissimos. Ea blanditiis et est.",
created_at: "2014-08-07 19:26:04",
updated_at: "2014-08-07 19:26:04"
}
]

Answer 1

The getBlogPosts() method in your controller echos $post rather than returning it. This means that the $response in your test will not have anything in it to json_decode.

Answer 2

Hope you figured it out by now but here is what I use:

$array = json_decode($response->getContent());

Answer 3

You can call the json method directly off the response object.

$response = $this->getJson('/foo');
$json = $response->json(); // ['foo' => 'bar', 'baz' => 'boo']

It also accepts a key as an argument.

$foo = $response->json('foo'); // 'bar'

Answer 4

Adding a method in /tests/TestCase.php helps a lot:

/**
 * dumps json result
 * @param string $function can be print_r, var_dump or var_export
 * @param boolean $json_decode 
 */
public function dump($function = 'var_export', $json_decode = true) {
    $content = $this->response->getContent();
    if ($json_decode) {
        $content = json_decode($content, true);
    }
    // ❤ ✓ ☀ ★ ☆ ☂ ♞ ☯ ☭ € ☎ ∞ ❄ ♫ ₽ ☼
    $seperator = '❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤';
    echo PHP_EOL . $seperator . PHP_EOL;
    $function($content);
    echo $seperator . PHP_EOL;
    return $this;
}

Then you can call it at any point after json call:

public function testInvalidPostID() {
    $this->json('PUT', '/posts/2222/sh-comments/1001', [
        'input' => 'SomeThing'
            ], [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . app('jwt')->getTokenForUser(2)
    ])->dump() //dumpnig output as array
      ->seeJsonStructure(['errors' => [
            '*' => [
                'message'
            ]
        ]
    ])->assertResponseStatus(404);
}