Laravel framework classes not available in PHPUnit data provider

The test will initialize much faster if you create the application right within the dataProvider method, especially if you have large set of items to test.

public function myDataProvider() {
    $this->createApplication();

    return [
        [ MyController::MAX_FILE_SIZE ]
    ];
}

As implied in this answer, this appears to be related to the order that PHPUnit will call any data providers and the setUp() method in any test cases.

PHPUnit will call the data provider methods before running any tests. Before each test it will also call the setUp() method in the test case. Laravel hooks into the setUp() method to call $this->createApplication() which will add the controller classes to the 'include path' so that they can be autoloaded correctly.

Since the data provider methods are run before this happens then any references to controller classes inside a data provider fail. It's possible work around this by modifying the test class to something like this:

class MyControllerTest extends TestCase {

    public function __construct($name = null, array $data = array(), $dataName = '') {
        parent::__construct($name, $data, $dataName);

        $this->createApplication();
    }

    public function myDataProvider() {
        return [
            [ MyController::MAX_FILE_SIZE ]
        ];
    }

    /**
     * @dataProvider myDataProvider
     */
    public function testMyController($a) {
        // Just an example
        $this->assertTrue(1 == 1);
    }
}

This will call createApplication() before the data provider methods are run, and so there is a valid application instance that will allow the appropriate classes to be autoloaded correctly.

This seems to work, but I'm not sure if it's the best solution, or if it is likely to cause any issues (although I can't think of any reasons why it should).