Codeception, unable to simulate ajax behavior - laravel

Question

I can't replicate ajax calls via codeception.
For example:
$I->sendAjaxPostRequest('login/verify', array('name' => 'name', 'password' => 'password'));
$I->seeResponseIsJson();
Will not raise any errors. But in the other hand, if I do the following:
$I->sendAjaxPostRequest('login/verify', array('name' => 'name', 'password' => 'password'));
$I->seeResponseIsJson();
$I->seeResponseContainsJson(['login_failed' => 1]);
//or
$I->grabDataFromJsonResponse('data.login_failed');
It gives me this error:
ErrorException: Argument 2 passed to
Codeception\Module\REST::arrayHasArray() must be of the type array,
null given, called in
C:\xampp\htdocs\blog\laravel\vendor\codeception\codeception\src\Codeception\Module\REST.php
on line 485 and defined
What I understand from the error above is that seeResponseContainsJson or grabDataFromJsonResponse internally will pass a response as a second argument to arrayHasArray. But it looks like no matter what the response is always empty.
Also, if I do the following:
$I->sendAjaxPostRequest('login/verify', array('name' => 'name', 'password' => 'password'));
var_dump($I->grabResponse());
I receive this for var_dump():
object(Codeception\Maybe)#753 (3) {
["position":protected]=>
int(0)
["val":protected]=>
NULL
["assocArray":protected]=>
NULL
}
Everything else works as expected with Codeception, I'm using PhpBrowser.

Answer 1

I'm sure not how useful this answer is to anyone else, but I landed here whilst googling for a similar error message:
ErrorException: Argument 2 passed to Codeception\Module\REST::arrayHasArray()
must be of the type array, null given
After much hair-pulling, I discovered that some debug output from my controller (a var_dump) was causing the returned document to not be valid JSON, and using $I->seeResponseContainsJson() was therefore throwing errors internally, as the response wasn't valid JSON
So, ensure the response your controller is sending is valid JSON, and this error should go away