I'm trying to test CRUD operations for my Lumen controllers. The constructor for each controller looks similar to this:

  private $loggedInUserId;

  public function __construct(Request $request) {
      $this->loggedInUserId = $request->user()->userId;
  }

And here's my test:

  public function testShowOneItemReturnsOnePayroll() {
    $this->withoutMiddleware();
    $this->json('GET', "intranet");
    $this->seeJsonStructure([
      'data' => [
        'prId',
        'userId',
        'firstName',
        'lastName',
        ...
      ]
    ]);
  }

I get this error when running the test:

PHPUnit\Framework\InvalidArgumentException: Argument #2 of PHPUnit\Framework\Assert::assertArrayHasKey() must be an array or ArrayAccess

However, The test is successful when I comment out the $loggedInUserId variable and its constructor initialization.

Question

How can I retrieve the user ID in my controllers and still get my tests to pass?

I solved my problem in part thanks to hotsaucejake in this Laracasts post.

I created a UserFactory and used it to create a "fake" User model, and referenced it using actingAs():

  public function testShowAllItemsReturnsAllPayrollRecords() {
    $user = UserFactory::new()->create();
    $this->withoutMiddleware();
    $this->actingAs($user)->json('GET', 'intranet');
    ...
}