How to Mock a Trait in Laravel

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DevOps, Cloud, Kubernetes — personal tech notes by ChengQing Su

Traits are a code reuse mechanism provided by PHP. This post discusses how to mock methods encapsulated inside a Trait.

Example Code

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trait SayHelloFormatter
{
    public function format($name)
    {
        return 'Hello '.$name.', this a test message';
    }
}

class Controller extends BaseController
{
    use SayHelloFormatter;

    public function sayHello($name){
        return $this->format($name);
    }
}

Mocking SayHelloFormatter in Unit Tests

Without mocking the format method in SayHelloFormatter:

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public function testShouldReturnTestMessageWithTomWhenCallSayHelloGivenNameTom()
{
    $response = $this->get('/sayHello/tom');
    $response->assertStatus(200)->assertSee('Hello tom, this a test message');
}

With mocking the format method in SayHelloFormatter:

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public function testShouldReturnMethodHasBeenMockedWhenCallSayHelloGivenNameTomAndUsingMockery()
{
    $mock = Mockery::mock(Controller::class)->makePartial();
    $mock->shouldReceive('format')->andReturn('This method has been mocked.');
    $this->app->instance(Controller::class, $mock);

    $response = $this->get('/sayHello/tom');

    $response->assertStatus(200)->assertSee('This method has been mocked.');
}