Laravel Testing Introduction

Laravel is built with testing in mind. It ships with PHPUnit configured and provides a rich set of helpers to test HTTP, database, mail, queues, and more.

1 - Test Structure

// Feature tests — test full HTTP requests and interactions
tests/Feature/

// Unit tests — test isolated PHP classes and methods
tests/Unit/

// Create tests
php artisan make:test PostControllerTest          // Feature (default)
php artisan make:test PostServiceTest --unit      // Unit

2 - A Basic Feature Test

namespace Tests\Feature;

use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;
use Tests\TestCase;

class PostControllerTest extends TestCase
{
    use RefreshDatabase;

    public function test_authenticated_user_can_view_posts(): void
    {
        $user = User::factory()->create();
        Post::factory(5)->for($user)->create();

        $response = $this->actingAs($user)->get(route('posts.index'));

        $response->assertStatus(200);
        $response->assertViewHas('posts');
    }
}

3 - Running Tests

php artisan test                              // Run all tests
php artisan test --filter=PostControllerTest  // Run a single class
php artisan test --filter=test_user_can_view  // Run a single method
php artisan test --parallel                   // Run in parallel (faster)

4 - RefreshDatabase

// RefreshDatabase wraps each test in a transaction and rolls back after.
// Use it in any test that touches the database — it keeps tests isolated
// and fast without dropping/recreating tables.

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\RefreshDatabase;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    use RefreshDatabase;
}