Issue with Mockery when injecting multiple mocked objects into controller - php

Question

I'm using Mockery in my Laravel based PHP project to help test a Laravel MVC controller. Below is the relevant part of my controller class I'm trying to test.
class DevicesController extends Controller
{
private $deviceModel;
private $rfDeviceModel;
private $userModel;
private $userDeviceModel;
public function __construct(Device $deviceModel, RFDevice $rfDeviceModel, User $userModel, UserDevice $userDeviceModel)
{
$this->middleware('guest');
$this->deviceModel = $deviceModel;
$this->rfDeviceModel = $rfDeviceModel;
$this->userModel = $userModel;
$this->userDeviceModel = $userDeviceModel;
}
...
public function add(Request $request)
{
$name = $request->input('name');
$description = $request->input('description');
$onCode = $request->input('onCode');
$offCode = $request->input('offCode');
$pulseLength = $request->input('pulseLength');
$type = 1;
$currentUserId = $this->currentUser()->id;
$newDeviceId = $this->deviceModel->add($name, $description, $type)->id;
$this->rfDeviceModel->add($onCode, $offCode, $pulseLength, $newDeviceId);
$this->userDeviceModel->add($currentUserId, $newDeviceId);
return redirect()->route('devices');
}
}
In particular, I'm writing several unit tests around the controller's add(Request $request) function to make sure that each of the three model add(...) functions are called. My test case to handle this looks like the following:
public function testAdd_CallsAddForModels()
{
$mockDeviceModel = Mockery::mock(Device::class);
$mockDeviceModel->shouldReceive('add')->withAnyArgs()->once();
$this->app->instance(Device::class, $mockDeviceModel);
$mockRFDeviceModel = Mockery::mock(RFDevice::class);
$mockRFDeviceModel->shouldReceive('add')->withAnyArgs()->once();
$this->app->instance(RFDevice::class, $mockRFDeviceModel);
$mockUserDeviceModel = Mockery::mock(UserDevice::class);
$mockUserDeviceModel->shouldReceive('add')->withAnyArgs()->once();
$this->app->instance(UserDevice::class, $mockUserDeviceModel);
$user = $this->givenSingleUserExists();
$this->addDeviceForUser($user->user_id);
}
private function givenSingleUserExists()
{
$user = new User;
$name = self::$faker->name();
$email = self::$faker->email();
$userId = self::$faker->uuid();
$user = $user->add($name, $email, $userId);
return $user;
}
private function addDeviceForUser($userId)
{
$this->withSession([env('SESSION_USER_ID') => $userId])
->call('POST', '/devices/add', [
'name' => 'Taylor',
'description' => 'abcd',
'onCode' => 1,
'offCode' => 2,
'pulseLength' => 3
]);
}
When I run this test, I get the following output in the console:
There was 1 error:
1) Tests\Unit\Controller\DeviceControllerTest::testAdd_CallsAddForModels
Mockery\Exception\InvalidCountException: Method add() from Mockery_1_App_RFDevice should be called
exactly 1 times but called 0 times.
But the funny and perplexing thing is that if I comment out and combination of 2 of the 3 mockery sections, my test pass. This means to mean, that my code is actually working correctly, but for some reason in this case, I can't inject multiple mocked model objects into my controller and test them all at once. I guess I could split this up into three separate tests that make sure each model's add(...) function is called, but I want to do it all in one test case if possible. I also know I could use a repository pattern to wrap all the business logic in the controller's add(...) function into a single call, but then I would run into the same problem while testing the repository class.

Answer 1

You're not mocking the return values of the methods so this line attempts to access an attribute (id) on a null.
$newDeviceId = $this->deviceModel->add($name, $description, $type)->id;
You can fix this by adding a return value to your Device model mock like so:
$mockDeviceModel = Mockery::mock(Device::class);
$device = new Device;
$mockDeviceModel->shouldReceive('add')->withAnyArgs()->once()->andReturn($device);
To make such problems easier to debug in the future, change your error handler to re-throw the exceptions in a testing environment instead of rendering a valid HTML response.