How to send an array of test-cases to PHPUnit willReturnOnConsecutiveCalls

Question

I am trying to send a pre-calculated array of test cases into a mock to be returned on consecutive calls - similar to the map function. However it takes a list of arguments, not an array.

My array is already generated by a fixture-generator and may be of variable length.

What I want to do is something like this, but of course this causes it to return the entire array on the first call.

// In a test case:
$processorMock
    ->method('process')
    ->willReturnOnConsecutiveCalls(
        $fixtureLoader->getProcessorScenarios() // how to explode this?
    );

// class FixtureLoader pseudocode:
function getProcessorScenarios(){
    return [ 
       [ $param1, $param2, $param3 ], // case 1
       [ $param1, $param2, $param3 ], // case 2
       ...
       [ $param1, $param2, $param3 ], // case N
    ];
}

I want to destructure the returned array from the fixture loader, using list() or some var-args exploding language construct like "..." in other languages, but couldn't find anything native that worked.

I do have what feels like a hacky method, which I will post as an initial answer Q&A style. I want to know if it's the best method.

Answer 1

A friend suggested an alternative available in PHP 5.6 - the "splat" operator or elipsis (...) although it doesn't seem to have an official name in PHP, but is a form of destructuring like the "spread" operator in Javascript ES6.

While I haven't tested this (as my app is currently locked to PHP 5.4 due to environmental constraints), it should therefore work simply thus:

$processorMock
    ->method('process')
    ->willReturnOnConsecutiveCalls(
        ...$fixtureLoader->getProcessorScenarios()
);

This is definitely the sweeter alternative I was looking for.