Generate HTTP Fixtures from Live API Calls in Laravel

Last updated on April 23rd, 2025 by Paul Redmond

The HTTP Fixtures package for Laravel generates fake JSON responses for external API calls in tests using Laravel's Http::fake(). It simplifies creating mock responses by integrating with FakerPHP to generate realistic test data.

Generating fake HTTP responses can be tedious, and this package makes it easy by creating a fixture from a real HTTP request in your test:

use Gromatics\Httpfixtures\Services\HttpResponseRecorder;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;
 
it('creates a HTTP Fixture from a real JSON request', function () {
    Http::record();
    Http::get('https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/search?order=desc&sort=activity&intitle=perl&site=stackoverflow&limit=1');
    HttpResponseRecorder::recordedToHttpFixture();
});

The above code will create a fixture in tests/Fixtures, and the underlying data is defined using Faker in a fixture class you can reuse. You can also generate fixtures from a JSON file or via an Artisan command:

public function definition(): array
{
    return [
        'items' => [
            0 => [
                'tags' => [
                    0 => $this->faker->word(),
                    1 => $this->faker->word(),
                    2 => $this->faker->word(),
                ],
                'owner' => [
                    'reputation' => $this->faker->numberBetween(10, 99),
                    'user_id' => $this->faker->numberBetween(1000000, 9999999),
                    'user_type' => $this->faker->word(),
                    'profile_image' => $this->faker->word(),
                    'display_name' => $this->faker->name(),
                    'link' => $this->faker->url(),
                ],
            ],
            // ...
        ],
    ];
}

Finally, once you've created fixtures, you can use them in a test like the following example:

Http::fake(["https://api.stripe.com/v1/*" => Http::response(
    new StripeFixture()->toJson(),  200),
]);
 
// Override values using dot notation
Http::fake(["https://api.stripe.com/v1/*" => Http::response(
    new StripeFixture(['items.0.tags' => ["my-tag"]])->toJson(),  200),
]);