Writing Laravel Tests That Are Worth Maintaining

I have inherited projects with 90% coverage and constant production bugs, and projects with thirty tests that almost never break. The difference is what got tested, not how much.

Feature Tests Give the Best Return

A feature test exercises a real route through real middleware against a real database. It catches routing mistakes, validation gaps, authorization holes and broken queries — all in one test.

public function test_guest_cannot_reach_admin_blog(): void
{
    $this->get('/admin/blog')->assertRedirect('/admin/login');
}

public function test_admin_can_publish_a_post(): void
{
    $this->actingAs(User::factory()->admin()->create())
         ->post('/admin/blog', [
             'title'   => 'Test Post',
             'excerpt' => 'Short summary.',
             'body'    => '<p>Body</p>',
             'is_active' => 1,
         ])
         ->assertRedirect();

    $this->assertDatabaseHas('blog_posts', ['slug' => 'test-post']);
}

Test Behaviour, Not Implementation

Assert that the post was created and the user was redirected. Do not assert that a particular private method was called. The first survives refactoring; the second is the reason people abandon test suites.

Where Unit Tests Earn Their Place

Pure logic with lots of branches: pricing calculations, date maths, permission rules, anything with edge cases you can enumerate. Those are cheap to test in isolation and genuinely worth it.

Use Factories, Not Fixtures

BlogPost::factory()->count(30)->create(['is_active' => true]);

Factories keep tests readable and let you generate the volume you need to catch performance problems.

The Flows That Must Have Tests

• Authentication and authorization boundaries.
• Anything that takes money.
• Anything that sends an email or fires a webhook.
• Every bug you have already fixed once.

That last one is the highest-value test in any suite. A bug that recurred is a bug that never had a test.

Run Them Automatically

Tests you have to remember to run are tests that stop being run. Wire them into CI on every push.