Laravel Fixtures Package

Fixtures are used to load a "fake" set of data into a database that can then be used for testing or to help give you some interesting data while you're developing your application.

A fixture may depend on other fixtures, specified via its CorpSoft\Fixture\Fixture::$depends property. When a fixture is being loaded, the fixtures it depends on will be automatically loaded BEFORE the fixture; and when the fixture is being unloaded, the dependent fixtures will be unloaded AFTER the fixture.

Installation

The preferred way to install this extension is through composer.

Either run

php composer.phar require --prefer-dist corp-soft/laravel-fixtures "*"

or add

"corp-soft/laravel-fixtures": "*"

to the require section of your composer.json file.

Defining a Fixture

To define a fixture, create a new class by extending CorpSoft\Fixture\ActiveFixture.

The following code defines a fixture about the User Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model and the corresponding users table.

<?php

namespace Fixtures;

use CorpSoft\Fixture\ActiveFixture;
use App\Models\User;

class UserFixture extends ActiveFixture
{
    /**
     * @var string
     */
    public $dataFile = 'fixtures/users.php';

    /**
     * @var string
     */
    public $modelClass = User::class;
}

Tip: Each ActiveFixture is about preparing a DB table for testing purpose. You may specify the table by setting either the CorpSoft\Fixture\ActiveFixture::$table property or the CorpSoft\Fixture\ActiveFixture::$modelClass property. If the latter, the table name will be taken from the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model class specified by modelClass.

The fixture data for an ActiveFixture fixture is usually provided in a file located at public/storage/fixtures/table_name.php. The data file should return an array of data rows to be inserted into the user table. For example:

<?php
// public/storage/fixtures/users.php
return [
    [
        'name' => 'user1',
        'email' => '[email protected]',
        'password' => bcrypt('secret'),
    ],
    [
        'name' => 'user2',
        'email' => '[email protected]',
        'password' => bcrypt('secret'),
    ],
];

As we described earlier, a fixture may depend on other fixtures. For example, a UserProfileFixture may need to depends on UserFixture because the user profile table contains a foreign key pointing to the user table. The dependency is specified via the CorpSoft\Fixture\Fixture::$depends property, like the following:

<?php

namespace Fixtures;

use CorpSoft\Fixture\ActiveFixture;
use App\Models\UserProfile;

class UserProfileFixture extends ActiveFixture
{
    /**
     * @var string
     */
    public $dataFile = 'fixtures/user_profile.php';

    /**
     * @var string
     */
    public $modelClass = UserProfile::class;

    /**
     * @var array
     */
    public $depends = [UserFixture::class];
}

The dependency also ensures, that the fixtures are loaded and unloaded in a well defined order. In the above example UserFixture will always be loaded before UserProfileFixture to ensure all foreign key references exist and will be unloaded after UserProfileFixture has been unloaded for the same reason.

Using Fixtures

1. If you are using phpunit to test your code, then you need to add CorpSoft\Fixture\Traits\FixtureTrait to abstract class TestCase in the tests folder as follows:

<?php

namespace Tests;

use CorpSoft\Fixture\Traits\FixtureTrait;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase as BaseTestCase;

abstract class TestCase extends BaseTestCase
{
    use CreatesApplication, FixtureTrait;

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    protected function setUp()
    {
        parent::setUp();

        $this->initFixtures();
    }
}

2. If you are using Laravel Dusk to test your code, then you need to add CorpSoft\Fixture\Traits\FixtureTrait to abstract class DuskTestCase in the tests folder as follows:

<?php

namespace Tests;

use CorpSoft\Fixture\Traits\FixtureTrait;
use Laravel\Dusk\TestCase as BaseTestCase;

abstract class DuskTestCase extends BaseTestCase
{
    use CreatesApplication, FixtureTrait;

    /**
     * @inheritdoc
     */
    protected function setUp()
    {
        parent::setUp();

        $this->initFixtures();
    }
    
    // other methods
}

After this steps you can define fixtures in your test classes as follows:

<?php

namespace Tests\Unit;

use Tests\TestCase;
use Fixtures\UserProfileFixture;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    /**
     * Declares the fixtures that are needed by the current test case.
     *
     * @return array the fixtures needed by the current test case
     */
    public function fixtures(): array
    {
        return [
            'profiles' => UserProfileFixture::class,
        ];
    }
        
    /**
     * A basic test example.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function testBasicTest()
    {
        $this->assertTrue(true);
    }
}

The fixtures listed in the fixtures() method will be automatically loaded before a test is executed. And as we described before, when a fixture is being loaded, all its dependent fixtures will be automatically loaded first. In the above example, because UserProfileFixture depends on UserFixture, when running any test method in the test class, two fixtures will be loaded sequentially: UserFixture and UserProfileFixture.