BasePath attribute always empty in request object, working on PHPUnit tests - php

Question

I have a controller has an action that looks something like this:
/**
* #Route("/my_route_path", name="my_route_name")
*/
public function doSomethingAction(Request $request)
{
$myPath = $request->getScheme().'://'.$request->getHttpHost().''.$request->getBasePath();
$data = file_get_contents($myPath. '/data_folder/data.json');
return $this->render('#Entry/my_template.html.twig', array(
'data' => json_decode($data, true)
));
}
And I create a functional test for this controller like this:
/** #test */
public function doSomething_should_success()
{
$client = static::createClient();
$crawler = $client->request('GET', '/my_route_path');
$this->assertEquals(200, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode());
}
But I can't run the functional test I still get : Failed asserting that 500 is identical to 200
So, after I checked the test.log file I find this error : file_get_contents(http://localhost/data_folder/data.json) : failed to open stream
As now the problem is comming from $request->getBasePath() because always contain empty string but the expected behaviour is return PATH_TO_MY_PROJECT_FOLDER\web in my case must return projects\web_apps\MY_PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME\web
So, the simplified question: why the request object always contain an empty basePath string in the unit test but it works very well on the browser.

Answer 1

The Request object helps you handle the request of a client, that is something like GET /my_route_path plus lots of headers and a server that is directed at.
The web server passes those information on to php and symfony, and symfony will turn this into a Request object. Symfony has usually one entry point, which is public/index.php (symfony 4) or web/app.php (symfony 3) which is assumed to be / or possibly /basePath/ (the basepath will be communicated by the web server and handled by Symfony).
Symfony will generate a Request object, where the basepath is essentially abstracted away, and whenever you generate a url (via Controller::generateUrl) the base path is taken into account. that's why the basepath is important for Requests.
This is actually described pretty well in the comments of the Request's functions:
getBasePath vs getPathInfo.
However, this only concerns the public facing URLs and doesn't have anything to do with how you structure your project and where that project is located, because that's completely irrelevant to the Request (separation of concerns and stuff).
So I guess, you are actually looking for the root directory of your project.
To find the location of your project dir, there is the very base version, where you directly use the PHP magic var __DIR__ which contains the directory the current script file is in, and you can navigate from there. since controllers are usually located such that their path is projectdir/src/Controller/TheController.php a __DIR__.'/../.. would give you the projectdir. However, that's not really clean. The better version:
Depending on the symfony version you're using, you should retrieve the project dir via the ParameterBagInterface (symfony 4)
function doSomethingAction(ParameterBagInterface $params) {
$projectDir = $params->get('kernel.project_dir');
}
or via the container (symfony 3) see also: new in symfony 3.3: A simpler way to get the project root directory
function doSomethingAction() {
$projectDir = $this->getParameter('kernel.project_dir');
}

Answer 2

In my case I had to inyect RequestStack $stackand access the main request, after that my "BasePath" has value. This is because I where in a subrequest and I had to access to the top level of the request.
This post helped me to understood: Symfony2 - get main request's current route in twig partial/subrequest
/**
* #Route("/myroute", name="myroute")
*/
public function myroute(RequestStack $stack)
{
$request = $stack->getMainRequest();
$route = $request->getPathInfo();
}