How do I get HTTP Request body content in Laravel?

Question

I am making an API with Laravel 5 and I'm testing it with PHPUnit. I need to test legacy functionality for compatibility, which is an XML POST. As of right now, my first test looks like:

public function testPostMessages()
{
    $response = $this->call('POST', 'xml');

    $this->assertEquals(200, $response->getStatusCode());
}

This is passing just fine. Next on my list is actually sending the XML data with the POST. So for my second test, I have:

public function testPostMessagesContent()
{
    $response = $this->call('POST', 'xml');

    $this->assertTrue(is_valid_xml($response->getContent()));
}

This test fails. However, I am not sending my XML data. How do I send my XML?
Now, after that I need to add in the functionality to get the content from the request. I know there is a Request object that I can interact with but I don't exactly know which method to call on it. How do I get my XML from inside my controller?

---

Update #1

I was able to get some results in the meantime. My current test looks like this:

public function testPostMessagesContent()
{
    $response = $this->call('POST', 'xml', array('key' => 'value'), array(), array(), array('content' => 'content'));
    $this->assertContains('~', $response->getContent());
}

I only have the tilde there because I know it won't match so that I can see the whole response. In XmlController.php I have:

class XmlController extends Controller {
public function index(Request $request)
{
    return $request;
    }
}

My output from PHPUnit is as follows:

1) XmlTest::testPostMessagesContent
Failed asserting that 'POST xml HTTP/1.1
Accept:          text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Charset:  ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Content-Type:    application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Host:            localhost
User-Agent:      Symfony/2.X
' contains "~".

Where are my parameters and my content? I feel like I am simply just using call() incorrectly.

---

Update #2

I updated my controller to use Request:all() like so:

class XmlController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
   {
        $content = Request::all();
        return $content;
    }
}

This returned my key-value pair, but not the content.

1) XmlTest::testPostMessagesContent
Failed asserting that '{"key":"value"}' contains "~".

Key-value pairs are good; it's progress. However, what I really need is the content since I'll be receiving that data in the content portion of the request. If I use Request::getContent() I get back a blank string. Here's my call in the test:

$response = $this->call('POST', 'xml', array('key' => 'value'), array(), array(), array('content' => 'content'));

Here's my test results:

1) XmlTest::testPostMessagesContent
Failed asserting that '' contains "~".

---

Update #3

I am not able to get the content body of an HTTP Request at all. Since XML wasn't working, I moved forward with the REST part of my API, which uses JSON. Here's one of my tests:

public function testPostMessagesContent()
{
    $response = $this->call('POST', 'messages', ['content' => 'content']);

    $this->assertEquals('saved!', $response->getContent());
}

This test passes. If I use curl, I get a successful call as well:

curl -X POST -d "content=my_new_content" "http://localhost:8000/messages"

This returns 'saved!' That's awesome, but if I try to use curl in a standalone PHP script (to simulate a client), this is what is returned:

Array ( [url] => http://localhost:8000/messages [content_type] => text/html; charset=UTF-8 [http_code] => 302 [header_size] => 603 [request_size] => 118 [filetime] => -1 [ssl_verify_result] => 0 [redirect_count] => 0 [total_time] => 0.063977 [namelookup_time] => 0.000738 [connect_time] => 0.000866 [pretransfer_time] => 0.000943 [size_upload] => 12 [size_download] => 328 [speed_download] => 5126 [speed_upload] => 187 [download_content_length] => -1 [upload_content_length] => 12 [starttransfer_time] => 0.057606 [redirect_time] => 0 [certinfo] => Array ( ) [primary_ip] => ::1 [primary_port] => 8000 [local_ip] => ::1 [local_port] => 63248 [redirect_url] => http://localhost:8000 [request_header] => POST /messages HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:8000 Accept: */* Content-type: text/xml Content-length: 12 ) Redirecting to http://localhost:8000. 

This is my curl command adding the POST fields:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'content=test');

It seems to me that POSTFIELDS is getting added to the body of the request. In this case, I still have the same problem. I am not able to get body content of my HTTP headers. After commenting out my validation, I get:

Array ( [url] => http://localhost:8000/messages [content_type] => text/html; charset=UTF-8 [http_code] => 200 [header_size] => 565 [request_size] => 118 [filetime] => -1 [ssl_verify_result] => 0 [redirect_count] => 0 [total_time] => 0.070225 [namelookup_time] => 0.000867 [connect_time] => 0.00099 [pretransfer_time] => 0.001141 [size_upload] => 12 [size_download] => 6 [speed_download] => 85 [speed_upload] => 170 [download_content_length] => -1 [upload_content_length] => 12 [starttransfer_time] => 0.065204 [redirect_time] => 0 [certinfo] => Array ( ) [primary_ip] => ::1 [primary_port] => 8000 [local_ip] => ::1 [local_port] => 63257 [redirect_url] => [request_header] => POST /messages HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:8000 Accept: */* Content-type: text/xml Content-length: 12 ) saved!

So I have my 'saved!' message. Great! But, in my database now I have a blank row. Not great. It is still not seeing the body content, just the headers.

---

Answer Criteria

I'm looking for the answers to these questions:

1. Why can't I get the body content of my request?
2. How do I get the body content of my request?

Answer 1

Inside controller inject Request object. So if you want to access request body inside controller method 'foo' do the following:

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

    public function foo(Request $request){
        $bodyContent = $request->getContent();
    }

Answer 2

You can pass data as the third argument to call(). Or, depending on your API, it's possible you may want to use the sixth parameter.

From the docs:

$this->call($method, $uri, $parameters, $files, $server, $content); 

Answer 3

For those who are still getting blank response with $request->getContent(), you can use:

$request->all()

e.g:

public function foo(Request $request){
   $bodyContent = $request->all();
}

Answer 4

I don't think you want the data from your Request, I think you want the data from your Response. The two are different. Also you should build your response correctly in your controller.

Looking at the class in edit #2, I would make it look like this:

class XmlController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $content = Request::all();
        return Response::json($content);
    }
}

Once you've gotten that far you should check the content of your response in your test case (use print_r if necessary), you should see the data inside.

More information on Laravel responses here:

http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/responses