Why phpunit is not getting the correct APP_ENV as specified in phpunit.xml?

Question

I'm using Laravel and this is my ./phpunit.xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<phpunit backupGlobals="false"
         backupStaticAttributes="false"
         bootstrap="bootstrap/autoload.php"
         colors="true"
         convertErrorsToExceptions="true"
         convertNoticesToExceptions="true"
         convertWarningsToExceptions="true"
         processIsolation="false"
         stopOnFailure="false">
    <testsuites>
        <testsuite name="FeatureTests">
            <directory suffix="Test.php">./tests/Feature</directory>
        </testsuite>

        <testsuite name="UnitTests">
            <directory suffix="Test.php">./tests/Unit</directory>
        </testsuite>
    </testsuites>
    <filter>
        <whitelist processUncoveredFilesFromWhitelist="true">
            <directory suffix=".php">./app</directory>
        </whitelist>
    </filter>
    <php>
        <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>
        <env name="CACHE_DRIVER" value="array"/>
        <env name="SESSION_DRIVER" value="array"/>
        <env name="QUEUE_DRIVER" value="sync"/>
        <env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite_testing" />
    </php>
</phpunit>

I'm firing one of my test suites with the following command:

./vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit --testsuite UnitTests

Inside my test method I have:

public function testAllMandatoryData()
{
   dump(env('APP_ENV'));
   ....
}

It's displaying "local" I was expecting "testing" as specified in phpunit.xml

         <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>

Edit: additional details I have this laravel application running in a Docker container

On the docker-compose.yml I set some environment variables like:

environment:
  - APP_ENV=local
  - DB_HOST=192.168.0.22
  - DB_PORT=33306
  - DB_DATABASE=mydatabase
  - DB_USERNAME=homestead
  - DB_PASSWORD=homestead

What I've noticed is that directives in phpunit.xml like:

    <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>

have no effect when the name is there in the docker-compose already.

Instead if I add some not defined in docker-compose.yml will be correctly set at phpunit runtime, like:

    <env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite_test"/>

end Edit

What I'm missing?

Thanks

Drink

I am not sure you can override container variables at the application level? Maybe these help: github.com/docker/compose/issues/3183, philippe.bourgau.net/… – Illation

Answer 1

I try to answer myself with the best option I found.

If you set ENV variables at docker-compose.yml file you won't be able to overwrite them with phpunit.xml directives such as:

  <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing"/>

Then you should opt for removing (like in this example) APP_ENV variable set from docker-compose.yml

And rely on .env Laravel file

APP_ENV=local

With this setup, phpunit will be able to overwrite the APP_ENV to "testing"

I'm still not 100% sure this arrangement is needed, with all docker agent versions. Another host I have with another Docker version behaves differently.

Drink

Wrong answer. You can override it. Use force="true" attribute. <env name="APP_ENV" value="testing" force="true"/> – Oly

Answer 2

use

<env name="APP_ENV" value="testing" force="true"/>
<env name="CACHE_DRIVER" value="array" force="true"/>
<env name="SESSION_DRIVER" value="array" force="true"/>
<env name="QUEUE_DRIVER" value="sync" force="true"/>
<env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite_testing" force="true"/>

Without the force parameter, it won't work. See this issue: https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit/issues/2353 and the merged PR: https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit/pull/2723

Asquith

@Drink this should be the chosen answer, so that you can still use those env params in your docker-compose file – Drat

Answer 3

Use config('app.env') instead. env() values might be cached, in which case php artisan config:clear might help, though I've also had problems with accessing env values from command line environments.

More info here and here.

Elinoreeliot

Thanks but none of your suggestion will work for me. – Drink

Why not? Nobody can help if you don't give us the details. – Illation

Added some details from discovery I found so far. – Drink

using php artisan config:clear worked for me and allowed my tests to run against the testing database. Their should be a better way for testing to get it to always connect to the testing database and not overwrite the primary database without wiping out this config. When I rebooted the docker setup the config came back so I would need to do this every time I rebooted the containers. – Toed

FYI: It would be config('app.env');. The config function uses dot notation. config('APP_ENV') will always be null. – Bigoted

thank you for this inspiration! – Plectrum

Answer 4

I had the same problem, .env variables seemed to be overriding the ones from my phpunit.xml, here are some of the solutions that could work:

1. Specify which phpunit.xml file to use when running phpunit, it may be using a wrong one. vendor/bin/phpunit --configuration [path to your phpunit.xml]
2. Clean the config cache. php artisan config:cache
3. If you're in a Docker container, the above action may not work for you. What I did was to delete manually the bootstrap/cache files.

Hope it helps!

Widgeon

for my case i'm using laradock, so i delete my local bootstrap/cache the run the test and it worked – Inner

Answer 5

I run into the same problem when using Docker alongside docker-compose, and the fact was that my docker-compose.yml was loading Laravel's .env file. So, I solved it by creating a .env.docker file and setting (in docker-compose.yml):

  env_file:
    - .env.docker

It worked like a charm, and PHPUnit was able to select my .env.testing file insted of .env

Tangleberry

Answer 6

Try clearing your config cache by running the command php artisan config:clear. It is because you probably ran the command php artisan config:cache before running your tests and your APP_ENV was cached as local.

Allenaallenby

Answer 7

I had to resort to this little hack to get the environment to 'testing', I had to put this in TestCase.php

protected function setUp(): void
{
   parent::setUp();
   $this->app->detectEnvironment( function () {
      return 'testing';
   });
}

Catheterize

Answer 8

For docker users, I added a new test script to composer.json file:

"test": [
        "DB_CONNECTION=sqlite && DB_DATABASE=:memory: && APP_ENV=testing && phpunit --colors=always --no-coverage"
        ],

This script is just overriding the environment variables defined in docker-compose.json

Isonomy

Answer 9

For me, changing "env" tags to "server" resolved this problem where variables set in phpunit.xml were not taking effect.

<server name="APP_ENV" value="testing" force="true" />

Abranchiate