Using reflection in PHPUnit

Question

I'm testing a private method of a class used in Symfony2 project with PHPUnit. I'm using the private methods testing strategy (through reflection) described by many developers such as http://aaronsaray.com/blog/2011/08/16/testing-protected-and-private-attributes-and-methods-using-phpunit/

But unfortunately, I got the following error:

There was 1 error: 1) My\CalendarBundle\Tests\Calendar\CalendarTest::testCalculateDaysPreviousMonth ReflectionException: Class Calendar does not exist /Library/WebServer/Documents/calendar/src/My/CalendarBundle/Tests/Calendar/CalendarTest.php:47

<?php
namespace My\CalendarBundle\Tests\Calendar;

use My\CalendarBundle\Calendar\Calendar;

class CalendarTest 
{    
    //this method works fine     
    public function testGetNextYear()
    {
        $this->calendar = new Calendar('12', '2012', $this->get('translator'));        
        $result = $this->calendar->getNextYear();

        $this->assertEquals(2013, $result);
    }

    public function testCalculateDaysPreviousMonth()
    {        
        $reflectionCalendar = new \ReflectionClass('Calendar'); //this is the line

        $method = $reflectionCalendar->getMethod('calculateDaysPreviousMonth');      
        $method->setAccessible(true);

        $this->assertEquals(5, $method->invokeArgs($this->calendar, array()));                 
    }
}

Why?

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

You need to use the whole namespaced class name when creating your reflection method, even if you include a use statement.

new \ReflectionClass('My\CalendarBundle\Calendar\Calendar');

This is because you are passing the class name as a string to the constructor, so it doesn't know about your use statement and is looking for the class name in the global namespace.

Also, for what it's worth, you don't actually need to create a ReflectionClass, then call getMethod() on it. Rather, you can directly create a ReflectionMethod object.

new \ReflectionMethod('My\CalendarBundle\Calendar\Calendar', 'calculateDaysPreviousMonth');

That should be essentially the same, but a bit shorter.