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Request Factories

Test requests in Laravel without all the boilerplate.

💡 Psst. Although our examples use Pest PHP, this works just as well in PHPUnit.

Take a look at the following test:

Oof. See, all we wanted to test was the phone number, but because our route's FormRequest has validation rules, we have to send all of these additional fields at the same time. This approach has a few downsides:

1. It muddies the test. Tests are supposed to be terse and easy to read. This is anything but.
2. It makes writing tests annoying. You probably have more than one test for each route. Every test you write requires all of these fields over and over again.
3. It requires knowledge of the FormRequest. You'd need to understand what each field in this form does before being able to write a passing test. If you don't, you're likely going to be caught in a trial-and-error loop, or worse, a false positive, whilst creating the test.

We think this experience can be vastly improved. Take a look:

Soooooo much nicer. And all thanks to Request Factories. Let's dive in...

Installation

You can install the package as a developer dependency via Composer:

Usage

First, let's create a new RequestFactory. A RequestFactory usually complements a FormRequest in your application (request factories work with standard requests too!). You can create a RequestFactory using the make:request-factory Artisan command:

Note that we've passed the SignupRequest FQCN as an argument. This will create a new request factory at tests/RequestFactories/SignupRequestFactory.php.

You can also pass your desired request factory name as an argument instead:

Whilst you're free to name your request factories as you please, we recommend two defaults for a seamless experience:

1. Place them in tests/RequestFactories. The Artisan command will do this for you.
2. Use a Factory suffix. So SignupRequest becomes SignupRequestFactory.

Factory basics

Let's take a look at our newly created SignupRequestFactory. You'll see something like this:

If you've used Laravel's model factories before, this will look pretty familiar. That's because the basic concept is the same: a model factory is designed to generate data for eloquent models, a request factory is designed to generate data for form requests.

The definition method should return an array of valid data that can be used when submitting your form. Let's fill it out for our example SignupRequestFactory:

Note that we have access to a faker property for easily generating fake content, such as a paragraph for our bio, along with a files method we can declare to segregate files from other request data.

Usage in tests

So how do we use this factory in our tests? There are a few options, depending on your preferred style.

Using create on the factory

This method is most similar to Laravel's model factories. The create method returns an array, which you can then pass as data to put, post or any other request testing method.

Using fake on the request factory

Seeing as you only normally make a single request per test, we support registering your factory globally with fake. If you're using this approach, make sure that it's the last method you call on the factory, and that you call it before making a request to the relevant endpoint.

Using fake on the form request

If you've used Laravel model factories, you'll likely be used to calling ::factory() on eloquent models to get a new factory instance. Request factories have similar functionality available. You don't need to do anything to enable this; we automatically register the ::fake() and ::factory() method on all FormRequests via macros!

You can use these methods in your tests instead of instantiating the request factory directly:

Using fakeRequest in Pest PHP

If you're using Pest, we provide a higher order method that you can chain onto your tests:

You can even chain factory methods onto the end of the fakeRequest method:

Overriding request factory data

It's important to note the order of importance request factories take when injecting data into your request.

1. Any data passed to get, post, put, patch, delete or similar methods will always take precedence.
2. Data defined using state, or methods called on a factory that alter state will be next in line.
3. Data defined in the factory definition and files methods come last, only filling out missing properties from the request.

Let's take a look at an example to illustrate this order of importance:

The default email defined in SignupRequestFactory is [email protected]. The default name is Luke Downing. Because we override the name property using the state method before calling fake, the name used in the form request will actually be Oliver Nybroe, not Luke Downing.

However, because we pass [email protected] as data to the put method, that will take priority over all other defined data, both [email protected] and [email protected].

The power of factories

Factories are really cool, because they allow us to create a domain-specific-language for our feature tests. Because factories are classes, we can add declarative methods that serve as state transformers.

You can also use dot-notation in the state method to alter deeply nested keys in your request data.

The state method is your friend for any data you want to add or change on your factory. What about if you'd like to omit a property from the request? Try the without method!

💡 You can use dot syntax in the without method to unset deeply nested keys

You can also pass an array to without to unset multiple properties at once.

Sometimes, you'll have a property that you want to be based on the value of other properties. In that case, you can provide a closure as the property value, which receives an array of all other parameters:

Occasionally, you'll notice that multiple requests across your application share a similar subset of fields. For example, a signup form and a payment form might both contain an address array. Rather than duplicating these fields in your factory, you can nest factories inside factories:

Now, when the SignupRequestFactory is created, it will resolve the AddressRequestFactory for you and fill the address property with all fields contained in the AddressRequestFactory definition. Pretty cool hey?

Request factories work hand in hand with model factories too. Imagine that you want to pass a User ID to your form request, but you need to create the user in the database in order to do so. It's as simple as instantiating the UserFactory in your request factory definition:

Because the UserFactory isn't created until compile time, we avoid any unexpected models being persisted to your test database when you manually override the owner_id field.

Using factories without form requests

Not every controller in your app requires a backing form request. Thankfully, we also support faking a generic request:

Solving common issues

I'm getting a CouldNotLocateRequestFactoryException

When using the ::fake() or ::factory() methods on a FormRequest, we attempt to auto-locate the relevant request factory for you. If your directory structure doesn't match for whatever reason, this exception will be thrown.

It can easily be resolved by adding a public static $factory property to your form request:

I call multiple routes in a single test and want to fake both

No sweat. Just place a call to fake on the relevant request factory before making each request:

I don't want to use the default location for storing request factories

Not a problem. We provide a config file you may publish where you can edit the path and namespace of request factories. First, publish the config file:

Now, in the newly created config/request-factories.php, alter the path and namespace keys to suit your requirements:

Testing

We pride ourselves on a thorough test suite and strict static analysis. You can run all of our checks via a composer script:

To make it incredibly easy to contribute, we also provide a docker-compose file that will spin up a container with all the necessary dependencies installed. Assuming you have docker installed, just run:

Changelog

Please see CHANGELOG for more information on what has changed recently.

Credits

• Luke Downing
• All Contributors

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.