Testing APIs and JSON Data

In this lesson, let's talk about API testing. In this case, we don't have any redirects to assert, and APIs usually work with JSON. So, we will see a couple of examples.

Laravel Code

In this example, we have a route in the route/api.php and two Controller methods to list products and store a product.

routes/api.php:

Route::get('/user', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user();
})->middleware(Authenticate::using('sanctum'));
 
Route::apiResource('products', \App\Http\Controllers\Api\ProductController::class); 

php artisan make:controller Api/ProductController --resource --api --model=Product

app/Http/Controllers/Api/ProductController.php:

use App\Models\Product;
use App\Http\Requests\StoreProductRequest;
 
class ProductController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return Product::all();
    }
 
    public function store(StoreProductRequest $request)
    {
        return Product::create($request->validated());
    }
}

If we test /api/products using any API client, we will get a list of products from the DB.

The Tests

We will continue to add tests in the same ProductsTest file. You can create a tests/Feature/Api directory, for example, and add all your API tests there.

In the first test, to get all products list, we will create...