Debugging Failing Tests

Writing tests is only half the job. The other half is understanding why a test fails — and that is where most beginners get stuck.

Reading Assertion Messages

When a test fails, Pest prints an assertion message that tells you exactly what went wrong. Learning to read it quickly saves a lot of time.

A typical failure looks like this:

FAILED  Tests\Feature\ProductsTest > homepage contains non empty table
Expected response status code [200] but received [302].

The first line tells you which test failed. The second line tells you what was asserted and what was actually returned.

Most assertion messages follow the pattern: expected X but got Y. Before reaching for dump() or dd(), read the message carefully — it often contains the full answer.

Reading Stack Traces

Below the assertion message, Pest shows a stack trace. For feature tests, you can usually ignore most of...