Discussion on: How to write testable code

[Arnas Kazlauskas]

Why Mockery and not let's say Prophecy?

[Daniel]

The mock library used is not what is important in the article. If I had used Prophecy someone may very well have commented saying 'Why not Mockery' ?

[Arnas Kazlauskas]

I get it, no need to be defensive.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is a bad choice.
I'm just curious why do you use Mockery as opposed to something that comes out of a box with PHPUnit. I've never tried Mockery so I'm eager to know its advantages.

[Daniel]

My apologies if it came across as defensive. It was not my intention. I have just used Mockery for such a long time I am used to it now.

I have never used Prophecy but taking a look at the differences there appear to be some subtle ones.

I will give it a try on my next project :) Thanks

[Theodore R. Smith]

Instead of Mockery/Prophet, why do people not use anonymous classes? Oh, that's right. The vast majority of PHP developers have never bothered to learn them.

Take this:

   $account = Mockery::Mock(Account::class);
   $account->shouldReceive('setState')
       ->with('active')
       ->andReturn($account)
       ->once();
   $account->shouldReceive('save')
       ->andReturn($account)
       ->once();

It can be rewritten into this:

$account = new class extends Account {
    public function setState(string $state): self
    {
        return $this;
    }

    public function save(): self
    {
        return $this;
    }
};

These are largely the same. You can, if you need to, ensure that each of those functions are called only once (use static $runCount), then they would be largely identical.

[Daniel]

I use a mocking framework because it is consistent with what other developers I work alongside will use.

I would have no problems using an anonymous class but I don't see the benefit it offers over a mature, well tested and known library.