creation of unit tests with users - php

Question

I want to test the next method of my controller
function index(){
if(Auth::User()->can('view_roles'))
{
$roles = Role::all();
return response()->json(['data' => $roles], 200);
}
return response()->json(['Not_authorized'], 401);
}
it is already configured for authentication (tymondesigns / jwt-auth) and the management of roles (spatie / laravel-permission), testing with postman works, I just want to do it in an automated way.
This is the test code, if I remove the conditional function of the controller the TEST passes, but I would like to do a test using a user but I have no idea how to do it.
public function testIndexRole()
{
$this->json('GET', '/role')->seeJson([
'name' => 'admin',
'name' => 'secratary'
]);
}

Answer 1

Depends on what kind of app are you building.
A - Using Laravel for the entire app
If your using Laravel for frontend/backend, well to simulate a logged-in user you could use the awesome Laravel Dusk package, made by the Laravel team. You can check the documentation here.
This package has some helpful methods to mock login sessions amongs a lot more of other things, you can use:
$this->browse(function ($first, $second) {
$first->loginAs(User::find(1))
->visit('/home');
});
That way you hit an endpoint with a logged-in user of id=1. And a lot more of stuff.
B - Using Laravel as a backend
Now, this is mainly how I use Laravel.
To identify a user that hits an endpoint, the request must send an access_token. This token helps your app to identify the user. So, you will need to make and API call to that endpoint attaching the token.
I made a couple of helper functions to simply reuse this in every Test class. I wrote a Utils trait that is being used in the TestCase.php and given this class is extended by the rest of the Test classes it will be available everywhere.
1. Create the helper methods.
path/to/your/project/ tests/Utils.php
Trait Utils {
/**
* Make an API call as a User
*
* #param $user
* #param $method
* #param $uri
* #param array $data
* #param array $headers
* #return TestResponse
*/
protected function apiAs($user, $method, $uri, array $data = [], array $headers = []): TestResponse
{
$headers = array_merge([
'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . \JWTAuth::fromUser($user),
'Accept' => 'application/json'
], $headers);
return $this->api($method, $uri, $data, $headers);
}
protected function api($method, $uri, array $data = [], array $headers = [])
{
return $this->json($method, $uri, $data, $headers);
}
}
2. Make them available.
Then in your TestCase.php use the trait:
path/to/your/project/tests/TestCase.php
abstract class TestCase extends BaseTestCase
{
use CreatesApplication, Utils; // <-- note `Utils`
// the rest of the code
3. Use them.
So now you can do API calls from your test methods:
/**
* #test
* Test for: Role index
*/
public function a_test_for_role_index()
{
/** Given a registered user */
$user = factory(User::class)->create(['name' => 'John Doe']);
/** When the user makes the request */
$response = $this->apiAs($user,'GET', '/role');
/** Then he should see the data */
$response
->assertStatus(200)
->assertJsonFragment(['name' => 'admin'])
->assertJsonFragment(['name' => 'secretary']);
}
Side note
check that on top of the test methods there is a #test annotation, this indicates Laravel that the method is a test. You can do this or prefix your tests names with test_