How to mock protected properties?

[kaysonwu]

Does mockery support mock protected properties? What should I do if I can?

[LastDragon-ru]

http://docs.mockery.io/en/latest/reference/protected_methods.html

[LastDragon-ru]

Alright, here is the correct answer - it is possible with a custom trait 😁 (Laravel 10+, PHP 8.1+; source) but with limitations:

• Readonly properties should be uninitialized.
• Private properties aren't supported.
• Property value must be an object (only in this case we can track usage).
• Property must be used while test.
• Property can be mocked only once.
• Objects without methods will be marked as unused (detection based on methods calls).
• Performance is untested.

$mock = Mockery::mock(A::class, MockProperties::class);
$mock
    ->shouldUseProperty('b')
    ->value(
        Mockery::mock(B::class), // or just `new B()`.
    );

$mock->a();

Implementation is pretty simple but relies on internals :( Would be nice if Mockery will support something similar out of the box (readonly and upcoming hooks make getters useless imo). The main difficulty - check if any of methods were called, to mark that property was used. Seems there is no built expectation for this case, and I've no idea how to implement it properly.