Mockery mock not returning specified value - unit-testing

Question

I'm using Mockery in my Laravel project to mock the User Eloquent model and test a route.
This is how I test the /api/user/activate route:
<?php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Session;
class ActivateTest extends TestCase
{
private $userMock;
public function setUp()
{
parent::setUp();
$this->userMock = Mockery::mock('App\User');
Session::start();
}
public function tearDown()
{
Mockery::close();
}
public function testActivate()
{
$this->userMock->shouldReceive('where->first')->once()->andReturn('test');
$this->userMock->shouldReceive('activate')->once();
$response = $this->call('POST', '/api/user/activate', [
'activationToken' => '838jfjnvu83u3',
'_token' => csrf_token()
]);
// This will be displayed in the PHPunit output
print_r($response->getContent());
$this->assertResponseStatus(200);
}
}
The problem I'm having is that the andReturn('test') doesn't seem to work. The PHPunit result is:
F{"error":{"message":null,"statusCode":404}}
Time: 276 ms, Memory: 15.50Mb
There was 1 failure:
1) ActivateTest::testActivate
Failed asserting that 404 matches expected 200.
This is the content of the activate() in the UserController:
public function activate(Request $request)
{
$activation = $request->input();
$user = $this->user->where('activationToken', $activation['activationToken'])->first();
if(!$user) return $this->respondNotFound($user);
try
{
$user->activate($activation['password']);
}
catch(ModelException $e)
{
return $this->respondInternalError($e->errorMessages());
};
return $this->respondCreated('Account activated.');
}
The problem is that $user in the controller is null because the mock is not returning test (in that case the condition would evaluate to true and I wouldn't get a 404 response).
Edit:
I also tried using PHPunit mocking but it wasn't successful:
$this->userMock = $this->getMockBuilder('App\User')->setMethods(['where', 'first', 'activate'])->getMock();
$this->userMock->expects($this->once())->method('where')->willReturn($this->userMock);
$this->userMock->expects($this->once())->method('first')->willReturn('test');
$this->userMock->expects($this->once())->method('activate');

Answer 1

It's not enough to mock an object. You need to get that mocked object to be injected into the class which contains that activate() function.
You can do that in your setUp() function as well. Try adding this...
$this->app->instance('App/User', $this->userMock);
That will tell Laravel when you want to inject an instance of App/User, to inject the mock object you just created instead.

Answer 2

The issue was caused by ->first() since it's not a method existing neither on the Eloquent or User classes.
To solve it I created a new UserRepository and injected it as a dependency in the controller constructor.
class UserRepository implements UserRepositoryInterface
{
/**
* #var User
*/
protected $user;
/**
* #param User $user
*/
public function __construct(User $user)
{
$this->user = $user;
}
/**
* #param $activationToken
* #return mixed
*/
public function whereActivationToken($activationToken)
{
return $this->user->where('activationToken', $activationToken)->first();
}
}
Injection in the UserController:
public function __construct(UserRepository $userRepository)
{
$this->userRepository = $userRepository;
}
And this is how the test PostActivateTest class looks like now:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Session;
class PostActivateTest extends TestCase
{
private $user;
private $userRepositoryMock;
public function setUp()
{
parent::setUp();
$this->user = Mockery::mock('App\User');
$this->userRepositoryMock = Mockery::mock('Repository\Database\UserRepository');
$this->app->instance('App\User', $this->user);
$this->app->instance('Bloom\BloomCRM\Repository\Database\UserRepository', $this->userRepositoryMock);
Session::start();
}
public function tearDown()
{
Mockery::close();
}
public function testActivate()
{
$this->userRepositoryMock->shouldReceive('whereActivationToken')->once()->andReturn($this->user);
$this->user->shouldReceive('activate')->once();
$this->call('POST', '/api/user/activate', [
'activationToken' => '838jfjnvu83u3',
'password' => 'test',
'_token' => csrf_token()
]);
$this->assertResponseStatus(201);
}
}