Laravel 9 API Testing: Route [XXXXXX] not defined

August 3, 2022

I’m creating a simple API using Laravel 9. When I access http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/categories from my REST client (insomnia) I’m getting the json response that I’m expecting. I started writing tests for my API. I’m trying out Pest, so I’ve got the following test:

use function Pest\Laravel\getJson;

it('returns empty when there are no elements in the system', function() {

    $categories = $this->getJson(route('categories'))->json('data');

    dd($categories);
});

I’m getting an error that says:

Route [categories] not defined.

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I also tried: $this->getJson(route('api/categories'))->json('data');

and tried php artisan route:clear as well but none of those made any difference.

Thanks.

>Solution :

Ensure that your /categories endpoint is named in your api.php routes file.

For example…

Route::get('/categories', [CategoriesController::class, 'index'])->name('categories');

We name routes so that we can change the URI of the route internally at the routes level without having to find and replace every instance of it in the code at once. Insomnia, being an external tool, won’t care about your route name.