Mocking an api call for testing in Laravel

Question

I have a controller that calls an api outside like this:

public function getUserData(Request $request)
{
   // api connection is established using guzzle and into $client variable
   $userData = $client->get($request->user_id);

   // ... process data
}

then in my test I do this.

public function testUserData()
{
   $userData = $this->post('user.data', [
       'user_id' => 1
   ]);
   $this->assertEquals($userData['user_id'], 1);
}

The test is working but I want to mock the api call so that it will not actually fire that call outside of the application.

Answer 1

You could do it like this:

1. Inject your HTTP client to the controller through the constructor
2. Swap the implementation of your client with a mocked one in your test

So, basically:

// Controller

protected $client;

public function __construct(MyHttpClient $client)
{
    // Config your client
    // Then set it to the class property
    $this->client = $client;
}

public function getUserData()
{
    $this->client->post-> ...
}

Then in your test:

public function testUserData()
{
    $clientMock = \Mockery::mock(MyHttpClient::class);
    // You specify here your assertions for the API call
    $clientMock->shouldReceive('post')->with(...)->andReturn(...);
    $this->app->instance(MyHttpClient::class, $clientMock);

   $userData = $this->post('user.data', [
       'user_id' => 1
   ]);

   $this->assertEquals($userData['user_id'], 1);
}

Answer 2

In Laravel 9, there is a mocking implementation of Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http where you can mock responses that are sent to specific hosts/urls.

This is taken from the example in the documentation:

Http::fake([
    // Stub a JSON response for GitHub endpoints...
    'github.com/*' => Http::response(['foo' => 'bar'], 200, $headers),
 
    // Stub a string response for Google endpoints...
    'google.com/*' => Http::response('Hello World', 200, $headers),
]);

Once the fakes are stubbed, you can then run your test normally and it will detect any requests sent to those faked endpoints.

It should also be mentioned that you will have to use the Laravel Http client in your own external requests for this to work correctly.