Tests in Laravel not picking up collection attributes - php

Question

I have a test in Laravel 7 constructed as follows:
<?php
namespace Tests\Feature\Http\Controllers\Auth;
use App\User;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;
use Tests\TestCase;
class LoginControllerTest extends TestCase
{
use DatabaseMigrations;
/**
* A basic feature test example.
*
* #return void
*/
public function testLoginPractitioner()
{
$user = factory(User::class, 1)->make();
dump($user);
$response = $this->post('/api/login', [
'phone_number' => $user->phone_number,
'password' => $user->password
], [
'Accept' => 'application/json',
'Content_Type' => 'application/json'
]);
$this->assertDatabaseHas('users', [
'phone_number' => $user->phone_number,
]);
}
}
With the user factory defined as this:
$factory->define(User::class, function (Faker $faker) {
return [
'email' => $faker->unique()->safeEmail,
'email_verified_at' => now(),
'phone_number' => '12' . $faker->numerify('#########'),
'password' => '$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi',
'remember_token' => Str::random(10),
'is_admin' => false
];
});
When I dump the user object created in the test, I can see that it has a phone_number attribute:
#attributes: array:6 [
"email" => "leonora.tromp#example.com"
"email_verified_at" => "2021-01-31 11:25:02"
"phone_number" => "12326385883"
"password" => "$2y$10$92IXUNpkjO0rOQ5byMi.Ye4oKoEa3Ro9llC/.og/at2.uheWG/igi"
"remember_token" => "Oy8DfAonMu"
"is_admin" => false
]
But my test keeps failing and I get this message, as if it has not phone_number attribute:
1) Tests\Feature\Http\Controllers\Auth\LoginControllerTest::testLoginPractitioner
Exception: Property [phone_number] does not exist on this collection instance.
Additionally, the assert fails even if I use a number that I am sure is in the database. Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Your problem is $user is a Collection, when you give a factory an amount of models to create, it will return a Collection instance contained the models created in your case 1. Secondly for the model to be saved to the db you should call create() and not make().
Changing the user creation code to the following should solve the problem.
$user = factory(User::class)->create();
If you at a time need to create multiple users, you need to get them out of the Collection. As you seem confused about Collections, probably reading up on Collections would be wise.