WebGuy seeResponseContainsJson not parsing as expected - codeception

Question

I have some acceptance tests hitting my REST API that are all basically the same pattern:
<?php
$I = new WebGuy($scenario);
$I->wantTo('Do something');
$I->haveHttpHeader('Accept', 'application/hal+json');
$I->sendGET('contact/1/website');
$I->seeResponseCodeIs(200);
$I->seeResponseIsJson();
$I->seeResponseContainsJson(array(...
The problem in some of my tests occur with seeResponseContainsJson. Given a JSON response:
{
_links: {
self: {
href: "http://myurl/api/v1/contact/1/website"
}
describedBy: {
href: "http://myurl/api/v1/documentation/collection"
}
}
_embedded: {
items: [1]
0: {
id: 1
label: "Personal Site"
url: "http://someurl.com"
_links: {
self: {
href: "http://myurl/api/v1/contact/1/website/1"
}
}
}
}
}
When trying to test the format of the response with seeResponseContainsJson, I have the following:
$I->seeResponseContainsJson(array(
'_links' => array(
'self' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'contact/1/website'
),
'describedBy' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'documentation/collection'
),
),
'_embedded' => array(
),
));
The issue is that this always fails. However, if I remove the check for _embedded:
$I->seeResponseContainsJson(array(
'_links' => array(
'self' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'contact/1/website'
),
'describedBy' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'documentation/collection'
),
),
));
Everything works fine. As far as I can tell the responses are the same and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of why _embedded would cause the JSON parsing to blow up as it does. Any ideas?

Answer 1

It seems like seeResponseContainsJson does not handle empty arrays. If I further implement what I assert the response to be until there are no empty arrays:
$I->seeResponseContainsJson(array(
'_links' => array(
'self' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'contact/1/website'
),
'describedBy' => array(
'href' => $baseUrl . 'documentation/collection'
),
),
'_embedded' => array(
'items' => array(
array(
'id' => 1,
),
),
),
));
My tests are now passing. This is sufficient for now, but perhaps handling empty arrays is a future feature request?