Testing Laravel Applications with Pest: A Practical Guide
Feature tests, factories, HTTP fakes and CI pipelines — how we keep RelaxGen client projects merge-ready.
Mehran Shafique · June 25, 2026 · 1 min read · 149 words
Tests are the cheapest place to fix bugs. We standardise on Pest for new Laravel work because readable tests encourage coverage — when tests read like specifications, developers actually write them.
What to test first
Priority one: authentication, authorization, payment webhooks and data mutations affecting money or grades. Priority two: API contracts consumed by mobile apps. Priority three: Blade snapshots for critical admin flows. Skip testing framework internals.
Http::fake and Mail::fake
Never hit Stripe or SendGrid in CI. Fake external HTTP with predictable responses and assert payloads. For queues, use Queue::fake() in unit tests and sync driver in integration tests selectively.
Database strategy
Use RefreshDatabase for feature tests and in-memory SQLite in CI for speed. Seed minimal fixtures per test class — avoid relying on full DatabaseSeeder in every run.
Quality engineering is part of every RelaxGen delivery. Ask about our test audit service for legacy Laravel codebases.
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