PHPUnit - post to an existing controller does not return an error

Question

I am new to PHPUnit and TDD. I just upgrade my project from Laravel 5.4 to 5.5 with phpunit 6.5.5 installed . In the learning process, I wrote this test:

/** @test */
public function it_assigns_an_employee_to_a_group() {
    $group = factory(Group::class)->create();

    $employee = factory(Employee::class)->create();

    $this->post(route('employee.manage.group', $employee), [
        'groups' => [$group->id]
    ]);

    $this->assertEquals(1, $employee->groups);
}

And I have a defined route in the web.php file that look like this

Route::post('{employee}/manage/groups', 'ManageEmployeeController@group')
    ->name('employee.manage.group');

I have not yet created the ManageEmployeeController and when I run the test, instead of get an error telling me that the Controller does not exist, I get this error

Failed asserting that null matches expected 1.

How can I solve this issue please?

in the test you want to assert that of 1 equals to something, then it says it does not! it you have not assert for route existence, why do you expect that ? — Mahdi Younesi
I needed to use $this->withoutExceptionHandling() for the error to trigger. Your response helped me a lot to find the answer to my question. — Prince Lionel N'zi

Prince Lionel N'zi Prince Lionel N'zi · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-29T11:54:44

The exception was automatically handle by Laravel, so I disabled it using

$this->withoutExceptionHandling();

The test method now look like this:

/** @test */
public function it_assigns_an_employee_to_a_group() {

    //Disable exception handling
    $this->withoutExceptionHandling();

    $group = factory(Group::class)->create();

    $employee = factory(Employee::class)->create();

    $this->post(route('employee.manage.group', $employee), [
        'groups' => [$group->id]
    ]);

    $this->assertEquals(1, $employee->groups);
}

PHPUnit - post to an existing controller does not return an error

2 Answers