PhpUnit unable to access external url - unit-testing

Question

On my local windows PC I am running XAMPP and it is serving a testpage on it (e.g. http://localhost/testsite/testpage.html)
Now on the same machine I have an instance of laravel 5.2 running and I have one named route in it called testroute.
I write a phpunit test cases
public function testBasicExample1() {
$this->visit('testroute')->see('Something'); //Passes
}
public function testBasicExample2() {
$this->visit('http://www.google.com')->see('Google'); //Passes
}
public function testBasicExample3() {
$this->visit('http://localhost/testsite/testpage.html')->see('Something Else');
//Fails as it is unable to reach the desired page (Received status code [404])
}
in TestCase.php
$baseUrl = 'http://localhost:8000';
and in .env APP_URL=http://localhost:8000
Is it know that localhost sites cannot be accessed in phpunit?
Update:
I figured out even http://www.google.com is not working, it is redirecting to the laravel's welcome route. (test passed as there was text 'Google' in that page as well). Basically it was trying to assess http://localhost:8000/www.google.com and that redirects to welcome page.
I am not sure how in laravel's phpunit I can access external url.

Answer 1

I banged my head against a wall for a long time with this. I don't believe it is possible / functional to test external sites with the Laravel click() or visit() methods. If it is, I'm not seeing it.
Though my need was to just check all my links, perhaps this hack may be helpful to you. I went back to basic php to assert the sites returned properly.
$sites = \App\Website::pluck('website');
foreach($sites as $site) {
$file_headers = #get_headers($site);
if (strpos($file_headers[0], '404 Not Found') || $file_headers[0] == null) {
$exists = false;
echo " Failed on: ".$site." ";
}
else {
$exists = true;
}
$this->assertTrue($exists);
}
It doesn't quite get you all the way to what you want (seeing something), but for me it was good enough to be able to see the link was live and successful.
Testing is slow as it is going out to x # of sites.
HTH