Testing File Uploads With Laravel

September 15, 2017 / Eric L. Barnes

Laravel now includes a new system for testing file uploads through two new fake methods, one on the UploadFile class and another on the Storage facade.

As the documentation shows here is a full test showing it in use:

<?php

namespace Tests\Feature;

use Tests\TestCase;
use Illuminate\Http\UploadedFile;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\WithoutMiddleware;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseMigrations;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\DatabaseTransactions;

class ExampleTest extends TestCase
{
    public function testAvatarUpload()
    {
        Storage::fake('avatars');

        $response = $this->json('POST', '/avatar', [
            'avatar' => UploadedFile::fake()->image('avatar.jpg')
        ]);

        // Assert the file was stored...
        Storage::disk('avatars')->assertExists('avatar.jpg');

        // Assert a file does not exist...
        Storage::disk('avatars')->assertMissing('missing.jpg');
    }
}

You can also customize the files width, height, and size for testing validation:

UploadedFile::fake()->image('avatar.jpg', $width, $height)->size(100);

Or create other types of files like PDF’s:

UploadedFile::fake()->create('document.pdf', $sizeInKilobytes);

This feature is in the latest Laravel release and you can find out more details in the official documentation.