Stubbing & mocking in PHPUnit in a Zend Framework application

Question

I am new to the Zend Framework and PHPUnit. I am transforming a legacy application to a MVC architecture and am trying to write unit tests. I am somewhat familiar with unit testing concepts but am stuck with stubbing and mocking in general. For instance consider the following

In a controller action I am trying to test I pass in a member ID. I then initialize a member object using the ID. Then I call a number of methods associated with the member object and assign the return values to the view objects.

class A extends Zend_Controller_Action {
    public function viewAction() {
        $member = new Member($this->getRequest()-> getParam('id'));

        //perform various calls on the member object 

        $gender = $member->getGender();
        ...

        //assign the return values to the view object

        $this->view->assign('gender',$gender);   
        ...

     }
}

How do I mock the $member variable in my tests so that I can customize the methods return values?

If my understanding here is incorrect I would greatly appreciate some guidance.

Thank you!

Further to what @markus says below; this is the reason I stopped unit testing controllers, which forced me to move as much logic as possible into my models. As a result I now have very skinny controllers and very fat models which has improved my code and is keepin it DRY. — vascowhite
– vascowhite, Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:17
That is what I am trying to work towards. In that case is it okay to not test controllers? Even what little there is (which I assume is simply getting the results from the model and assigning it to the view variables). — Satyam
– Satyam, Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:32
Yes, good point, lean controllers are a goal anyways! I'll incorporate that into my answer. — markus
– markus, Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 13:33

markus · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-27 21:05:00Z

6

If I understand you correctly, you're writing a test for this action. In that case it's impossible to mock $member since the new instance is created inside the method. That's why we're all striving to float as many of our new statements as far up in the object graph as possible (DI).

Generally there is the special PHPunit testcase Zend_Test_PHPUnit to test your controllers.

But it is, as a matter of fact, very hard or even impossible to test ZF controllers correctly (meaning with full isolation). You'd be better of to test the rest of your app, your general library, etc.

In other words, in the ZF1 logic, the controller is the central wiring place (after the bootstrap), where a lot of new statements are traditionally used. Obviously that leads to non-testability because every instance which is created instead of injected, is unmockable.

As @vascowhite pointed out, it is also generally good to strive for lean controllers. This means, move as much logic as possible to your model layer. This will lead to less redundance (DRY) and better testability at the same time.

But pay attention not to bloat your models either. At one point you will probably want to factor some code out into additional components.

An additional problem is that you can't mock the Front Controller either since it's a singleton. So you really don't have many options to test such an action. The only option would be to inject the member instance or get it from the registry (not a good idea either).

So, given all that it is clear that you can't reach full isolation for your action tests. But

ZF2 will be much easier to test, though.

edited Feb 27, 2012 at 21:05

answered Feb 26, 2012 at 11:27

markus

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5 Comments

Satyam Over a year ago

Yes, that is exactly what I am asking. So just to make sure I got this right, are you suggesting I mock the getParam() method of the Front Controller to return the mocked $member object? And thank you for clarifying what I thought was the case but could not find much literature confirming it.

markus Over a year ago

Actually, I was also wrong about mocking the front controller, it's a singleton, another testability anti-pattern. See my changed answer.

Satyam Over a year ago

I was using the Registry at one point but gave up on that because of testing challenges it posed. By injecting you mean I should pass the $member variable as a parameter to the action? I don't think that would be possible since I need the member id from the request to create the $member object.

markus Over a year ago

Actually, stuff in the registry is really easy to mock. Just create a mock object and save it to the registry. You could inject the member class instance and then use a getMember($id) to actually get the member. It's not good practice to pass a specific ID to the member via constructor anyways.

Satyam Over a year ago

I like the idea of creating a getMember($id) method. Thank you for all your help @markus. I will accept your answer and post my solution for the benefit of others once I have the chance to try it out.

Davert · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-27 23:37:00Z

1

You'd better start with covering controllers with functional tests. In this case you can bypass this mocking problem and get better coverage of test. Controllers are always hard to be covered with unit tests, because they are strongly coupled.

To write functional tests with ZF consider using Codeception: http://codeception.com/01-27-2012/bdd-with-zend-framework.html

Also, there are some examples, how a unit tests for controller can be made. But, sincerly, I recommend unit-testing controllers after functional tests for them are made.

http://codeception.com/docs/06-UnitTestsAndBDD#TestingController

answered Feb 27, 2012 at 23:37

Davert

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