Validating HTTP Response Codes in PHPUnit

Question

I am writing unit tests for several methods which return HTTP response codes. I cannot find a way to assert an HTTP response code. Perhaps I am missing something obvious, or I am misunderstanding something about PHPUnit.

I am using PHPUnit 4.5 stable.

Relevant part of class Message:

public function validate() {
  // Decode JSON to array.
  if (!$json = json_decode($this->read(), TRUE)) {      
    return http_response_code(415);
  }
  return $json;
}

// Abstracted file_get_contents a bit to facilitate unit testing.
public $_file_input = 'php://input';

public function read() {
  return file_get_contents($this->_file_input);
}

Unit test:

// Load invalid JSON file and verify that validate() fails.
public function testValidateWhenInvalid() {
  $stub1 = $this->getMockForAbstractClass('Message');
  $path =  __DIR__ . '/testDataMalformed.json';
  $stub1->_file_input = $path;
  $result = $stub1->validate();
  // At this point, we have decoded the JSON file inside validate() and have expected it to fail.
  // Validate that the return value from HTTP 415.
  $this->assertEquals('415', $result);
}

PHPUnit returns:

1) MessageTest::testValidateWhenInvalid
Failed asserting that 'true' matches expected '415'.

I'm unsure why $result is returning 'true' . . . especially as a string value. Also unsure what my 'expected' argument ought to be.

Answer 1

According to the docs you can call the http_response_code() method with no parameters to receive the current response code.

<?php

http_response_code(401);
echo http_response_code(); //Output: 401

?>

Therefore your test should look like:

public function testValidateWhenInvalid() {
    $stub1 = $this->getMockForAbstractClass('Message');
    $path =  __DIR__ . '/testDataMalformed.json';
    $stub1->_file_input = $path;
    $result = $stub1->validate();
    // At this point, we have decoded the JSON file inside validate() and have expected it to fail.
    // Validate that the return value from HTTP 415.
    $this->assertEquals(415, http_response_code()); //Note you will get an int for the return value, not a string
}