# Unable to obtain response body in PHPUnit for Slim 4

**URL:** <https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/unable-to-obtain-response-body-in-phpunit-for-slim-4/5049>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [December 16, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/unable-to-obtain-response-body-in-phpunit-for-slim-4/5049 "2021-12-16T15:37:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![slick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@slick](https://discourse.slimframework.com/u/slick)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/unable-to-obtain-response-body-in-phpunit-for-slim-4/5049/1 "2021-12-16T15:37:10Z")

</div>

I’m testing a POST endpoint. In postman everything works.

But PHPUnit always has empty body hence I’m unable to perform necessary assertions.

```auto
    public function testDiscountCalculationForVariousDiscountStrategiesIsSuccessfullyInvoked(
        $orderJsonPayloadName,
        $strategyName
    ) {
        $payload = $this->getOrderJsonPayload($orderJsonPayloadName); // json content

        $request = $this
            ->createRequest('POST', '/api/discounts/calculate')
            ->withQueryParams(['strategy' => $strategyName])
            ->withParsedBody($payload);

        $response = $this->app->handle($request);

        $this->assertEquals(200, $response->getStatusCode());

        var_dump($response->getBody()); die;
    }

```

This `var_dump` gives me:

```auto
{
  ["stream":protected]=>
  resource(318) of type (stream)
  ["meta":protected]=>
  array(6) {
    ["wrapper_type"]=>
    string(3) "PHP"
    ["stream_type"]=>
    string(4) "TEMP"
    ["mode"]=>
    string(3) "w+b"
    ["unread_bytes"]=>
    int(0)
    ["seekable"]=>
    bool(true)
    ["uri"]=>
    string(10) "php://temp"
  }
  ["readable":protected]=>
  NULL
  ["writable":protected]=>
  bool(true)
  ["seekable":protected]=>
  NULL
  ["size":protected]=>
  NULL
  ["isPipe":protected]=>
  NULL
  ["finished":protected]=>
  bool(false)
  ["cache":protected]=>
  NULL
}

```

and `$response->getBody()->getContents()` gives me empty string.

In Postman I normally see JSON response with some data.

In `app/middleware.php` I’ve added `$app->addBodyParsingMiddleware();` - without it it was impossible for my controller to read any payload I was sending to the `POST` route.

What am I doing wrong?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![slick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@slick](https://discourse.slimframework.com/u/slick)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2021, 3:47pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/unable-to-obtain-response-body-in-phpunit-for-slim-4/5049/2 "2021-12-16T15:47:34Z")

</div>

Whoa! I’ve found this: [$response-\>getBody()-\>getContents() returns always empty content · Issue #48 · 8p/EightPointsGuzzleBundle · GitHub](https://github.com/8p/EightPointsGuzzleBundle/issues/48#issuecomment-250485980)

I’ve managed to get the body by casting it to a string.

```auto
(string) $response->getBody()

```

Now I can `json_decode` and assert but it’s bizarre. Is this a proper way to do this? I’m new to Slim 4.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![odan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9de053/32.png) [@odan](https://discourse.slimframework.com/u/odan)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2021, 8:39pm UTC](https://discourse.slimframework.com/t/unable-to-obtain-response-body-in-phpunit-for-slim-4/5049/3 "2021-12-17T20:39:18Z")

</div>

Yes, this is also the correct way in Slim to get the body content as a string.

When you cast the body, PHP calls the magic method `__toString()`.  
You could also call the `__toString()` method directly instead, but that doesn’t look very nice.

```php
$content = $request->getBody()->__toString();

```

To recommend way is this:

```php
$content = (string)$response->getBody();

```