Laravel is built with testing in mind. In fact, support for testing with Pest and PHPUnit is included out of the box and a phpunit.xml file is already set up for your application. The framework also ships with convenient helper methods that allow you to expressively test your applications.

By default, your application's tests directory contains two directories: Feature and Unit. Unit tests are tests that focus on a very small, isolated portion of your code. In fact, most unit tests probably focus on a single method. Tests within your "Unit" test directory do not boot your Laravel application and therefore are unable to access your application's database or other framework services.

Feature tests may test a larger portion of your code, including how several objects interact with each other or even a full HTTP request to a JSON endpoint. Generally, most of your tests should be feature tests. These types of tests provide the most confidence that your system as a whole is functioning as intended.

An ExampleTest.php file is provided in both the Feature and Unit test directories. After installing a new Laravel application, execute the vendor/bin/pest, vendor/bin/phpunit, or php artisan test commands to run your tests.

When running tests, Laravel will automatically set the configuration environment to testing because of the environment variables defined in the phpunit.xml file. Laravel also automatically configures the session and cache to the array driver so that no session or cache data will be persisted while testing.

You are free to define other testing environment configuration values as necessary. The testing environment variables may be configured in your application's phpunit.xml file, but make sure to clear your configuration cache using the config:clear Artisan command before running your tests!

In addition, you may create a .env.testing file in the root of your project. This file will be used instead of the .env file when running Pest and PHPUnit tests or executing Artisan commands with the --env=testing option.

To create a new test case, use the make:test Artisan command. By default, tests will be placed in the tests/Feature directory:

If you would like to create a test within the tests/Unit directory, you may use the --unit option when executing the make:test command:

[!NOTE] Test stubs may be customized using stub publishing.

Once the test has been generated, you may define test as you normally would using Pest or PHPUnit. To run your tests, execute the vendor/bin/pest, vendor/bin/phpunit, or php artisan test command from your terminal: