Setting up integration tests in laravel package

We need to create a Laravel instance along with a database available for PHPUnit to run tests against real datasets. Not fragile ridicule. First, you must develop your packages separately for a number of reasons, one of which is a workbench in Laravel 5.

So, first we need dev-require

a Laravel framework in our project:

"require-dev": {
    "phpunit/phpunit": "~4.0",
    "phpspec/phpspec": "~2.1",
    "laracasts/testdummy": "~2.0",
    "laravel/laravel": "dev-develop"
},   

      

        
        
        
      

    

Now we can create an abstract class with a name DbTestCase

from which all our tests will pass. In this class, we will be deploying a Laravel instance and an in-memory SQLite database for speed.

If we extend our own Laravel test class Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase

, then some of the work has already been done by us. We just need to create a method that returns an instance Illuminate\Foundation\Application

.

/**
 * Boots the application.
 *
 * @return \Illuminate\Foundation\Application
 */
public function createApplication()
{
    $app = require __DIR__.'/../vendor/laravel/laravel/bootstrap/app.php';

    $app->register('Path\To\Your\PackageServiceProvider');

    $app->make('Illuminate\Contracts\Console\Kernel')->bootstrap();

    return $app;        
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Pay attention to the line $app->register('Path\To\Your\PackageServiceProvider');

, this is important. Include the service package provider path here, so we'll register it with our Laravel instance that lives in our folder /vendor

.

We now have a Laravel application, we need to set up an in-memory SQLite database. Simple, Laravel TestCase

has a function setUp()

that runs before the test starts to do this:

/**
 * Setup DB before each test.
 *
 * @return void  
 */
public function setUp()
{ 
    parent::setUp();

    $this->app['config']->set('database.default','sqlite'); 
    $this->app['config']->set('database.connections.sqlite.database', ':memory:');

    $this->migrate();
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

I won't give a big explanation as its quite readable. As you can see on the last line, we also call $this->migrate()

, which obviously does our migrations every time we run the test, giving us a new DB to test. Let's see how it works:

/**
 * run package database migrations
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function migrate()
{ 
    $fileSystem = new Filesystem;
    $classFinder = new ClassFinder;

    foreach($fileSystem->files(__DIR__ . "/../src/Migrations") as $file)
    {
        $fileSystem->requireOnce($file);
        $migrationClass = $classFinder->findClass($file);

        (new $migrationClass)->up();
    }
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Without going into details, basically what we're doing here is finding the src/Migrations

package folder that requires all the files and then migrating them. Its a rough situation and requires a lot of security checks (I will do this in the future), but it works.

Why not Artisan :: call ('migrate') ??

Simple! The command is php artisan migrate --package='vendor/package'

deprecated in Laravel 5 . Developers are now expected to create their own commands to create and move migration files to the desired location in the application. This is a much more flexible approach.