Better way for testing validation errors

Question

I'm testing a form where user must introduce some text between let's say 100 and 500 characters.

I use to emulate the user input:

$this->actingAs($user)
->visit('myweb/create')
->type($this->faker->text(1000),'description')
->press('Save')
->see('greater than');

Here I'm looking for the greater than piece of text in the response... It depends on the translation specified for that validation error.

How could do the same test without having to depend on the text of the validation error and do it depending only on the error itself?

Controller:

public function store(Request $request)
{
    $success = doStuff($request);
    if ($success){
        Flash::success('Created');
    } else {
        Flash::error('Fail');
    }

    return Redirect::back():
}

dd(Session::all()):

 `array:3 [
  "_token" => "ONoTlU2w7Ii2Npbr27dH5WSXolw6qpQncavQn72e"
  "_sf2_meta" => array:3 [
    "u" => 1453141086
    "c" => 1453141086
    "l" => "0"
  ]
  "flash" => array:2 [
    "old" => []
    "new" => []
  ]
]

Answer 1

you can do it like so -

$this->assertSessionHas('flash_notification.level', 'danger'); if you are looking for a particular error or success key.

or use $this->assertSessionHasErrors();

Answer 2

I think there is more clear way to get an exact error message from session.

    /** @var ViewErrorBag $errors */
    $errors = request()->session()->get('errors');
    /** @var array $messages */
    $messages = $errors->getBag('default')->getMessages();
    $emailErrorMessage = array_shift($messages['email']);

    $this->assertEquals('Already in use', $emailErrorMessage);

Pre-requirements: code was tested on Laravel Framework 5.5.14

Answer 3

get the MessageBag object from from session erros and get all the validation error names using $errors->get('name')

    $errors = session('errors');
    $this->assertSessionHasErrors();
    $this->assertEquals($errors->get('name')[0],"The title field is required.");

This works for Laravel 5 +

Answer 4

Your test doesn't have a post call. Here is an example using Jeffery Way's flash package

Controller:

public function store(Request $request, Post $post)
{
    $post->fill($request->all());
    $post->user_id = $request->user()->id;

    $created = false;

    try {
        $created = $post->save();
    } catch (ValidationException $e) {
        flash()->error($e->getErrors()->all());
    }

    if ($created) {
        flash()->success('New post has been created.');
    }

    return back();
}

Test:

public function testStoreSuccess()
{
    $data = [
        'title' => 'A dog is fit',
        'status' => 'active',
        'excerpt' => 'Farm dog',
        'content' => 'blah blah blah',
    ];

    $this->call('POST', 'post', $data);

    $this->assertTrue(Post::where($data)->exists());
    $this->assertResponseStatus(302);
    $this->assertSessionHas('flash_notification.level', 'success');
    $this->assertSessionHas('flash_notification.message', 'New post has been created.');
}

Answer 5

try to split your tests into units, say if you testing a controller function

you may catch valication exception, like so:

} catch (ValidationException $ex) {

if it was generated manually, this is how it should be generated:

throw ValidationException::withMessages([
            'abc' => ['my message'],
        ])->status(400);

you can assert it liks so

$this->assertSame('my message', $ex->errors()['abc'][0]);

if you cannot catch it, but prefer testing routs like so:

    $response = $this->json('POST', route('user-post'), [
        'name'        => $faker->name,
        'email'       => $faker->email,            
    ]);

then you use $response to assert that the validation has happened, like so

$this->assertSame($response->errors->{'name'}[0], 'The name field is required.');

PS

in the example I used

$faker = \Faker\Factory::create();

ValidationException is used liks this

use Illuminate\Validation\ValidationException;

just remind you that you don't have to generate exceptions manually, use validate method for common cases:

$request->validate(['name' => [
            'required',
        ],
    ]);

my current laravel version is 5.7