Laravel 8 Tests: PHPUnit error: Unknown formatter "unique"

user_6500085 0
Viewed 3276

I have written a test that involves a factory. When I execute the test, I get this error:

The data provider specified for Tests\Unit\ExampleTest::testTakePlace is invalid. InvalidArgumentException: Unknown formatter "unique" /var/www/html/api/vendor/fakerphp/faker/src/Faker/Generator.php:249

Expected result

This error should not be shown, I should be able to use $this->faker->unique().

How I tried to fix this problem

By reading the doc again and again (no difference was found) and by reading questions&answers on the Internet (only one question & only one answer were found: to extend Laravel's TestCase but the official documentation, as I mentionned it, says the contrary). (Laravel's TestCase is provided by use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase;)

Question

Why doesn't it work and how to fix this bug?

Sources

Test sources

It extends PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase (not Laravel's TestCase) because the documentation says to extend it. Indeed: https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/testing#creating-and-running-tests . This is not the only part of the doc mentionning to extend it.

<?php

namespace Tests\Unit;

use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use App\Models\Project;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    /**
     * @dataProvider provideTakePlaceData
     */
    public function testTakePlace($project)
    {
        $response = $this->json('GET', '/controllerUserProject_takePlace', [
            'project_id' => $project->id
        ]);

        
    }
    
    public function provideTakePlaceData() {
        return [    
                    Project::factory()->make()
        ];
    }
}

Controller

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ControllerUserProject extends Controller
{
    public function takePlace(Request $request, $project_id)
    {
        return;
    }
}

The most important: the factory

<?php

namespace Database\Factories;

use App\Models\Project;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\Factory;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;

class ProjectFactory extends Factory
{
    /**
     * The name of the factory's corresponding model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $model = Project::class;

    /**
     * Define the model's default state.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function definition()
    {
        return [
                    'id' => $this->faker->unique()->numberBetween(1, 9000), 
        ];
    }
}
laravel phpunit
4 Answers

Change:
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
to:
use Tests\TestCase;

Why?

When your ExampleTest extends PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase Laravel app is never initialized in tests, and so you don't have access to Laravel features like factories.

The documentation tells you to extend PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;, but it refers to Unit tests. Feature tests should extend Tests\TestCase. This is something pretty new. Until Laravel 5.8 both unit and feature tests were extending Tests\TestCase by default. I personally just define all tests as feature tests to avoid such issues.

user_41715780

The problem was due to the use of a dataProvider with the use of the factories. More precisely: PHPUnit data providers should not be used when Laravel factories are.

user_65000850

  1. If you are using faker in Factories please make sure these are working correctly regardless (as per example try running Project::factory()->make(); within Laravel Tinker and see the results)

  2. Second common issue (as mentioned above) is the class that you extend your Test with - see above

  3. Third and frequently omitted one that's causing this error, is a missing parent constructor call in the setUp() - (if you use it)

<?php

namespace Tests\Unit;

use Tests\TestCase;
use App\Models\Project;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    protected Project $project;

    public function setUp(): void
    { 
         parent::setUp();
         $this->project = Project::factory()->make();
    }
user_192067090

I think you need to use the WithFaker trait to use faker :

<?php

namespace Tests\Unit;

use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use App\Models\Project;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithFaker;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
     use WithFaker;
     
     // ...
 }
user_9996170
Related