Is it possible to mock protected properties and methods

Question

Is it possible to mock a protected property with PHP Mockery?

I got a class with a method, I will call it `a, that does some magic on an array that is retrieved from a protected property from the same class.

That protected property is filled by another method b, in the same class.

I would like to test method a by mocking the protected property so I don't have to class method b first.

So is this possible? If not, should I refactor my code? Or are there other ways (considering best practises).

Answer 1

It is possible to mock protected methods, but as some people have pointed out you might want to refactor your code if you feel the need for mocking these methods.

If you do want to mock protected methods you can do this according to the example below:

$myMock = Mockery::mock('myClass')->shouldAllowMockingProtectedMethods();

Using this mock it's then possible to mock protected methods in the same way as you would mock public methods.

Answer 2

Sometimes your code is fine and you think there is no reason to change your code to facilitate tests (which is a good reason in my opinion), What I do is to use reflection within my object, you can even have a helper method like this:

class MockingHelpers
{
    public static function mockProperty($object, string $propertyName, $value)
    {
        $reflectionClass = new \ReflectionClass($object);

        $property = $reflectionClass->getProperty($propertyName);
        $property->setAccessible(true);
        $property->setValue($object, $value);
        $property->setAccessible(false);
    }
}

Note the accessible is only applied in the reflection context, thus no damage is done.

It's not the perfect solution, sometimes you might really have an issue in your code, but this could help you!