Testing: assertDispatched does not work #230

franck-grenier · 2025-03-27T16:09:22Z

franck-grenier
Mar 27, 2025

Hello,
I'm going on with your great package. Nice work by the way !

I start a workflow on model creation within an observer:

public function created(Article $article): void
{
    WorkflowStub::make(ArticleProcessWorkflow::class)->start($article);
}

It works as expected. My worker runs the workflow and its activities.

Now, I would like to unit test this behaviour by simply asserting the ArticleProcessWorkflow is dispatched upon Article creation:

public function testArticleCreatedDispatchesWorkflow(): void
{
    // Given
    WorkflowStub::fake();

    // When
    $article = DataArticle::factory([
        'surtitre' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor',
        'texte' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.',
        'nota' => 'NB : Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.',
    ])->createOne();

    // Then
    WorkflowStub::assertDispatched(ArticleProcessWorkflow::class);
}

That does not work.
I get the error The expected [App\Workflows\ArticleProcessWorkflow] workflow/activity was not dispatched.. And, after debugging, I can see that App::make(self::$DISPATCHED_LIST) is an empty array.

What did I miss ?

rmcdaniel · 2025-03-28T00:17:21Z

rmcdaniel
Mar 28, 2025
Maintainer

The assertDispatched method is only for asserting that activities or child workflows are dispatched from inside a workflow according to your workflow logic.

It doesn't test that top-level calls like WorkflowStub::make()->start() work because that behavior is already guaranteed by the framework. You're essentially testing Laravel Workflow itself at that point, which isn't necessary.

Instead, you should focus on testing that your observer method was triggered. For example:

public function testArticleObserverIsTriggeredOnCreate(): void
{
    $observer = new class {
        public static bool $called = false;

        public function created(Article $article): void
        {
            static::$called = true;
        }
    };

    Article::observe($observer);

    Article::factory()->create();

    $this->assertTrue($observer::$called, 'Expected ArticleObserver::created() to be called.');
}

Or, if you want to go a bit further and make the WorkflowStub call testable, you can wrap it like this:

namespace App\Workflows;

use Workflow\WorkflowStub;

class WorkflowDispatcher
{
    public function start(string $workflowClass, mixed ...$args): void
    {
        WorkflowStub::make($workflowClass)->start(...$args);
    }
}

Then update your observer to use the dispatcher:

public function created(Article $article): void
{
    app(WorkflowDispatcher::class)->start(ArticleProcessWorkflow::class, $article);
}

And now you can mock it in your test:

public function testWorkflowDispatcherIsCalled(): void
{
    $this->mock(WorkflowDispatcher::class, function ($mock) {
        $mock->shouldReceive('start')
            ->once()
            ->with(SimpleWorkflow::class, Mockery::type(Article::class));
    });
    Article::factory()->create();
}

This gives you clean separation, keeps your tests focused on your own logic, and avoids trying to mock or assert framework internals.

Of course, if you actually want to test things end-to-end, then you shouldn't call WorkflowStub::fake() at all, and you’ll need to run your queue workers in the background. You can look at how Laravel Workflow runs these kinds of tests internally here:
👉 https://github.com/laravel-workflow/laravel-workflow/blob/master/tests/TestCase.php#L17

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Testing: assertDispatched does not work #230

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franck-grenier Mar 27, 2025

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rmcdaniel Mar 28, 2025 Maintainer

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franck-grenier
Mar 27, 2025

rmcdaniel
Mar 28, 2025
Maintainer