Testing laravel controllers with JSON request body

Here's what worked for me.

$postData = array('foo' => 'bar');
$postRequest = $this->action('POST', 'MyController@myaction', array(), array(), array(), array(), json_encode($postData));
$this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());

That seventh argument to $this->action is content. See docs at http://laravel.com/api/source-class-Illuminate.Foundation.Testing.TestCase.html#_action

In Laravel 5, the call() method has changed:

$this->call(
    'PUT', 
    $url, 
    [], 
    [], 
    [], 
    ['CONTENT_TYPE' => 'application/json'],
    json_encode($data_array)
);

I think that Symphony's request() method is being called: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/testing.html

This is how I go about doing this in Laravel4

// Now Up-vote something with id 53
$this->client->request('POST', '/api/1.0/something/53/rating', array('rating' => 1) );

// I hope we always get a 200 OK
$this->assertTrue($this->client->getResponse()->isOk());

// Get the response and decode it
$jsonResponse = $this->client->getResponse()->getContent();
$responseData = json_decode($jsonResponse);

$responseData will be a PHP object equal to the json response and will allow you to then test the response :)