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> Symfony 5 > API Platform Part 2: Security
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Logging in Inside the Test

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We've added two options when we make the request: a Content-Type header, to tell API Platform that any data we send will be JSON-formatted, and a json option set to an empty array which is enough to at least send some valid JSON in the body of the request.

Because, before we added the json option, we got this error: a 400 Bad Request with... some details in the body that indicate we sent invalid JSON.

Deserialization Before Security

But... wait a second. Assuming our access_control security is set up correctly... shouldn't we get denied access before API Platform tries to deserialize the JSON data we're sending to the endpoint?

This is a little bit of a security gotcha... and even as I'm recording this, it looks like API Platform may change how this works in their next version. Progress!

When you send data to an endpoint API platform does the following things in this order. First, it deserializes the JSON into whatever resource object we're working with - like a CheeseListing object. Second, it applies the security access controls. And third it applies our validation rules.

Do you see the problem? It's subtle. If API Platform has any problems deserializing the JSON into the object, the user of our API will see an error about that... even if that user doesn't have access to perform the operation. The JSON syntax error is one example of this. But there are other examples, like if you send a badly-formatted date string to a date field, you'll get a normalization error about this... even if you don't have access to that operation.

This is probably not a huge deal in most cases, but it is possible for a user to get some details about how your endpoints work... even if that user don't have access to them. Of course... they still can't do anything with those endpoints... but I do want you to be aware of this.

But... at this very moment, there's a pull request open on API Platform to rename access_control to something else - probably security - and to change the behavior so that security runs before deserialization. In other words, if this does concern you, it's likely to not behave like this in the future.

Ok, but now that we are sending valid JSON, let's see if the test passes! Run:

php bin/phpunit

And... we've got it! Green!

Creating the User in the Database

We've proven that you do need to log in to execute this operation. So now... let's log in and make sure it works!

To do that, we first need to put a user in the database. Cool! We got this: $user = new User() and then fill in the email setEmail() and username with setUsername(). The only other field that's required on the user is the password. Remember, that field is the encoded password. For now, let's cheat and generate an encoded password manually. Find your terminal and, once again, run:

php bin/console security:encode-password

Let's pass this foo and... it gives me this giant, encoded password string. Copy that, and paste it into setPassword().

38 lines | tests/Functional/CheeseListingResourceTest.php
// ... lines 1 - 7
class CheeseListingResourceTest extends ApiTestCase
{
public function testCreateCheeseListing()
{
// ... lines 12 - 18
$user = new User();
$user->setEmail('cheeseplease@example.com');
$user->setUsername('cheeseplease');
$user->setPassword('$argon2id$v=19$m=65536,t=6,p=1$AIC3IESQ64NgHfpVQZqviw$1c7M56xyiaQFBjlUBc7T0s53/PzZCjV56lbHnhOUXx8');
// ... lines 23 - 35
}
}

The User object is ready! To save this to the database, it's the same as being inside our code: we need to get the entity manager, then call persist and flush on it. But, normally, to get the entity manager - or any service - we use autowiring. Tests are the one place where autowiring doesn't work... because you're, sort of, "outside" of your application.

Instead, we'll fetch the services from the container by their ids. Try this: $em = self::$container - a parent class sets the container on this nice property - ->get() and the service id. Use doctrine then say ->getManager().

You can also use the type-hint you use for autowiring as the service id. In other words, self::$container->get(EntityManagerInterface::class) would work super well. And actually... it's probably a bit simpler than what I did.

Anyways, now that we have the entity manager, use the famous: $em->persist($user) and $em->flush().

38 lines | tests/Functional/CheeseListingResourceTest.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
public function testCreateCheeseListing()
{
// ... lines 12 - 23
$em = self::$container->get('doctrine')->getManager();
$em->persist($user);
$em->flush();
// ... lines 27 - 35
}
// ... lines 37 - 38

POST to Login

Hey! We've got a user in the database! To test if an authenticated user can create a cheese listing... um... how can we authenticate as this user? Well, because we're using traditional session-based authentication... we just need to log in! Make a POST request to /login. I'll keep the header, but this time we will send some JSON data: email set to cheeseplease@example.com and password => 'foo'.

38 lines | tests/Functional/CheeseListingResourceTest.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
public function testCreateCheeseListing()
{
// ... lines 12 - 27
$client->request('POST', '/login', [
'headers' => ['Content-Type' => 'application/json'],
'json' => [
'email' => 'cheeseplease@example.com',
'password' => 'foo'
],
]);
// ... line 35
}
// ... lines 37 - 38

And we should probably assert that this worked. Copy the response status code assertion, paste it down here, and check that this returns 204... because 204 is what we decided to return from SecurityController.

38 lines | tests/Functional/CheeseListingResourceTest.php
// ... lines 1 - 34
$this->assertResponseStatusCodeSame(204);
// ... lines 36 - 38

We're not quite yet making an authenticated request to create a new CheeseListing... but let's check our progress! Find your terminal and run:

php bin/phpunit

Got it! Woo! We're now logged in and ready to start making authenticated requests.

Except... if you've done functional tests before... you might see a problem. Try running the tests again:

php bin/phpunit

Explosion!

Duplicate entry cheeseplease@example.com

coming from the database. The most annoying thing about functional tests is that you need to control what's in the database... including what might be "left over" in the database from a previous test. This is nothing specific to API Platform... though the API Platform team does have some tools to help with this.

Next, let's guarantee that the database is in a clean state before each test is executed.