Validating HTTP Response Codes in PHPUnit - php

Question

I am writing unit tests for several methods which return HTTP response codes. I cannot find a way to assert an HTTP response code. Perhaps I am missing something obvious, or I am misunderstanding something about PHPUnit.
I am using PHPUnit 4.5 stable.
Relevant part of class Message:
public function validate() {
// Decode JSON to array.
if (!$json = json_decode($this->read(), TRUE)) {
return http_response_code(415);
}
return $json;
}
// Abstracted file_get_contents a bit to facilitate unit testing.
public $_file_input = 'php://input';
public function read() {
return file_get_contents($this->_file_input);
}
Unit test:
// Load invalid JSON file and verify that validate() fails.
public function testValidateWhenInvalid() {
$stub1 = $this->getMockForAbstractClass('Message');
$path = __DIR__ . '/testDataMalformed.json';
$stub1->_file_input = $path;
$result = $stub1->validate();
// At this point, we have decoded the JSON file inside validate() and have expected it to fail.
// Validate that the return value from HTTP 415.
$this->assertEquals('415', $result);
}
PHPUnit returns:
1) MessageTest::testValidateWhenInvalid
Failed asserting that 'true' matches expected '415'.
I'm unsure why $result is returning 'true' . . . especially as a string value. Also unsure what my 'expected' argument ought to be.

Answer 1

According to the docs you can call the http_response_code() method with no parameters to receive the current response code.
<?php
http_response_code(401);
echo http_response_code(); //Output: 401
?>
Therefore your test should look like:
public function testValidateWhenInvalid() {
$stub1 = $this->getMockForAbstractClass('Message');
$path = __DIR__ . '/testDataMalformed.json';
$stub1->_file_input = $path;
$result = $stub1->validate();
// At this point, we have decoded the JSON file inside validate() and have expected it to fail.
// Validate that the return value from HTTP 415.
$this->assertEquals(415, http_response_code()); //Note you will get an int for the return value, not a string
}