AssertableJson->whereNot does not work with array.

[FunkyOz]

Laravel Version

10.43.0

PHP Version

8.3.2 on Docker

Database Driver & Version

No response

Description

I came across a strange behavior of whereNot method in Illuminate\Testing\Fluent\Concern\Matching trait and I cannot understand if it's wanted or not.

I tried to test the emptiness of an array in a response and I used the whereNot method with an AssertableJson object. Therefore I passed to the function an empty array because I seen the implementation and I noticed that on line 73 of Matching trait there is a conversion of $expected var from an Arrayable to an array, so I supposed that the rational behind was to manage array too.
But on line 86 the $expected var it's not convert to string for sprintf so php throw an ErrorException: Array to string conversion.

I add an example that throw as I mentioned above in the Steps to reproduce section.

Steps To Reproduce

<?php

use Illuminate\Testing\TestResponse;
use Illuminate\Http\Response;
use Illuminate\Testing\Fluent\AssertableJson;

test('whereNot should not throw an error', function () {
    $response = new TestResponse(new Response('{"data": [1, 2, 3]}'));
    $response->assertJson(function (AssertableJson $json) {
        $json->whereNot('data', []);
    });
});

[github-actions]

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Thank you!

[calvinli08]

Hi @FunkyOz,

From what I've gathered, while the Matching::whereNot() method does allow for an array to be passed, it seems to assume that it is a non-empty array. If your intention is to simply check that the value located at $key is non-empty, then there are other methods such as has() that already serve a similar enough purpose (https://laravel.com/docs/10.x/http-tests#asserting-json-attribute-presence-and-absence).

It's hard to determine the author's original intent just from observing the code though, so in the case that Matching::whereNot() was in fact intended to allow for empty arrays to be passed, then I think a simple (but admittedly hacky) solution to the issue would just be to call json_encode($expected) before passing it to sprintf().

Hope this helps :)

[FunkyOz]

Hi @calvinli08,
I found a workaround for my use case so no problem, I opend this issue only for clarification and you were helpful.
If you want to close the issue, it's ok.

Thank you :)

[fwmaiht]

This looks like an obvious bug, as even non-empty array will result in an error, so I would like to fix it if no one else is handling.
I also think the solution is to put json_encode($expected) before sprintf().

Thank you

[driesvints]

Looks like @FunkyOz found a solution so closing this one. Thanks all.