Intermittent failures when testing activity logs

[maxwoerner]

Hi guys,

I am writing a feature test to test if activity logging works correctly. Unfortunately, the test fails intermittently approx. every fifth time. I am pretty sure this is because the event firing takes some time and the Activity model is only created after the test has run.

My test:

test('log entry is created if a gig is created', function () {
    $gig = Gig::factory()->create();

    $activity = Activity::all()->last();

    expect($activity->subject_id)->toBe($gig->id);
    expect($activity->description)->toBe('gig_created');

    expect(DB::table('activity_log')->where('description', 'gig_created')->count())
        ->toBe(1);
});

As said, the test is successful approx. 4 out of 5 times. But sometimes it fails with the following error as the Activity model is not yet created in the DB:

Tests\Feature\ActivityLogTest > log entry is created if the gig response status is set initially
PHPUnit\Framework\ExceptionWrapper

Attempt to read property "subject_id" on null

What's the best practice to test something like this and prevent this error from happening?

Thank you!

[maxwoerner]

Nevermind, I figured it out myself. There was a random parameter in my Factory that sometimes prevented the log entry from being created.

Thanks for the great package!