Using Dusk with Laravel on macOS

Laravel 5.4 has introduced some great new features, but I think one that’s really impressing a lot of people is a new package called Dusk.

Running in a virtual machine from your local (host) machine, with database migrations

If you’re using Homestead, or another virutal machine, but you launch Dusk from your host machine, you will run into problems using the database. This will seem familiar:

SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused (SQL: select * from information_schema.tables where table_schema = homestead and table_name = migrations)

The problem is that the migration takes place in the console, but the application takes place in the virtual machine. For example, if you’ve used the DatabaseMigrations trait with a Dusk test.

Big shout out to one of my colleagues Stef Horner for finding this solution.

1. Copy your .env file, and call it .env.dusk.
2. Change your database name to a testing database, such as appname_test.
3. Add a new setting HOST_DB_PORT=33060 – note the 0 on the end.
4. Add 'host-port' => env('HOST_DB_PORT'), to config/database.php.
5. In your AppServiceProvider, add a new method (overrideDbPort below) and add it to your boot.

In App\Providers\AppServiceProvider:

public function boot()
{
    $this->overrideDbPort();
}

/**
 * Override the database port under conditions
 */
public function overrideDbPort()
{
    if ($this->app->isLocal() && $this->app->runningInConsole()) {
        // Override the port so you can tunnel into homestead.
        if ($port = config('database.host-port')) {
            config()->set('database.connections.mysql.port', $port);
        }
    }
}

Now, run php artisan dusk from your host machine. It’ll run the migrations in the virtual machine, and then the application.

This has the added advantage of now all artisan commands will run in your virtual machine from your host machine.

Still having issues? Read on.

Setting up

I had a few problems setting it up, so here’s some things to check if you’re having problems.

Make sure you’ve installed Chrome

This may sound stupid, but I don’t have Chrome installed – I tend to use Safari and Firefox. This caused a problem when running locally on my Mac, as you might imagine.

Check permissions

Dusk is installed via Composer, but it doesn’t set the binary to the correct permissions to be used by Artisan, if you’re using it locally rather than in the box you installed it from. For example, you installed it using a Vagrant box (like Homestead), but you’re running your tests locally on your computer.

This will fix that problem:

chmod -R 0755 vendor/laravel/dusk/bin

Check your .env file has the correct APP_URL

You often forget to do this at the start of your project, but check your .env file for APP_URL. It has to be correct for Dusk to be able to load the page.