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28.

Testing Forms

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Testing Forms

One of the most common things you’ll want to do in a test is fill out a form. Start by using the crawler to select our submit button and get a Form object. Notice that we’re selecting it by the actual text that shows up in the button, though you can also use the id or name attributes:

public function testRegister()
{
    // ...

    // the name of our button is "Register!"
    $form = $crawler->selectButton('Register!')->form();
}

In the browser, if we submit the form blank, we should see the form again with some errors. We can simulate this by calling submit() on the client and passing it the $form variable.

Tip

Both request() and submit() return a Crawler object that represents the DOM after making that request. Be sure to always get a new $crawler variable each time you call one of these methods.

Let’s test that the status code of the error page is 200 and that we at least see an error:

public function testRegister()
{
    // ...

    // the name of our button is "Register!"
    $form = $crawler->selectButton('Register!')->form();

    $crawler = $client->submit($form);
    $this->assertEquals(200, $client->getResponse()->getStatusCode());
    $this->assertRegexp(
        '/This value should not be blank/',
        $client->getResponse()->getContent()
    );
}

Run the test again!

php bin/phpunit -c app

Beautiful!

Filling out the Form with Data

Let’s submit the form again, but this time with some data! Use selectButton to get another $form object.

Now, give each field some data. This is done by treating the form like an array and putting data in each field. These names come right from the HTML source code, so check there to see what they look like:

public function testRegister()
{
    // ...

    // submit the form again
    $form = $crawler->selectButton('Register!')->form();

    $form['user_register[username]'] = 'user5';
    $form['user_register[email]'] = 'user5@user.com';
    $form['user_register[plainPassword][first]'] = 'P3ssword';
    $form['user_register[plainPassword][second]'] = 'P3ssword';

    $crawler = $client->submit($form);
}

Now when we submit, the response we get back should be a redirect. We can check that by calling the isRedirect method on the response. Next, use the followRedirect() method to tell the client to follow the redirect like a standard browser. Finally, let’s make sure that our success flash message shows up after the redirect:

public function testRegister()
{
    // ...

    $crawler = $client->submit($form);
    $this->assertTrue($client->getResponse()->isRedirect());
    $client->followRedirect();
    $this->assertContains(
        'Welcome to the Death Star, have a magical day!',
        $client->getResponse()->getContent()
    );
}

Run the tests!

php bin/phpunit -c app

Success! We now have proof that we can visit the registration form and fill it out with and without errors. If we accidentally break that later, our test will tell us.