HTTP client Cakephp 3 ignores json body - http

Question

I'm currently writing a RESTful API in Cakephp 3 whereby I need to test a POST operation through http://host.com/api/pictures. The code for the test:
<?php
namespace App\Test\TestCase\Controller;
use App\Controller\Api\UsersController;
use Cake\TestSuite\IntegrationTestCase;
use Cake\Network\Http\Client;
use Cake\Network\Http\FormData;
class ApiPicturesControllerTest extends IntegrationTestCase{
public $fixtures = [
'app.users',
'app.comments',
'app.albums',
'app.users_albums'
];
public function testAdd(){
// $data = new FormData();
$accessToken ='eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOjksImV4cCI6MTQ1NzYyOTU3NH0.NnjXWEQCno3PUiwHhnUCBjiknR-NlmT42oPLA5KhuYo';
$http = new Client([
'headers' => ['Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . $accessToken, 'Content-Type' => 'application/json']
]);
$data = [
"album_id" => 1,
"link" => "http://www.google.com",
"description" => "testtesttest",
"favorite" => true
];
$result = $http->post('http://vecto.app/api/pictures/add.json', $data, ['type'=>'json']);
// $this->assertResponseOk();
// debug($result);
}
}
When I try to debug the result I get a 'cannot add or update child row' while I'm sure the responding id does exists
(the fixtures does have the id's too). Additionally, the log indicates that it only tries to insert the create/update rows. Therefore, I'm pretty sure the data is ignored but however I can't find a solution. I already tried different combination of headers like only application/json for Accept, application/json for Content-Type etc. I'm using the CRUD plugin for Cakephp to pass the data to an add function.
Postman output
Furthermore, I tried the Postman Chrome plugin to save the data and that actually does work. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong in the test?

Answer 1

That's not how the integration test case is ment to be used. You are dispatching an external, real request, which will leave the test environment, while you should use the request dispatching tools that the integration test case supplies, that is
IntegrationTestCase::get()
IntegrationTestCase::post()
IntegrationTestCase::put()
etc...
These methods will dispatch simulated requests that do not leave the test environment, which is crucial for things to work properly, as you want to use test connections, inspect possible exceptions, have access to the used session, etc...
ie, you should do something along the lines of
$accessToken = 'eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOjksImV4cCI6MTQ1NzYyOTU3NH0.NnjXWEQCno3PUiwHhnUCBjiknR-NlmT42oPLA5KhuYo';
$this->configRequest([
'headers' => [
'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . $accessToken,
'Content-Type' => 'application/json'
]
]);
$data = [
"album_id" => 1,
"link" => "http://www.google.com",
"description" => "testtesttest",
"favorite" => true
];
$this->post('/api/pictures/add.json', json_encode($data));
Note that a content type of application/json will require you to send raw JSON data! If you don't actually need/want to test parsing of raw input, then you could skip that header, and pass the array as data instead.
See also
Cookbook > Testing > Controller Integration Testing
API > \Cake\TestSuite\IntegrationTestCase