Issues using partial mocking in Laravel 9.x

Question

Hey laravel developers, I found an issue with partial mocking, I need to test a method that uses an internal method, which needs to be mocked, I tried using several methods to mock the method, like next idea: < ;/p>

#1
$mockMyClass = Mockery::mock(
    $myClassInstance
)->makePartial();

#2
$mockMyClass = $this->partialMock();
#3
$mockMyClass = $this->createPartialMock();

// and then

$mockMyClass->shouldReceive('internalMethod')
    ->andReturn($responseInternalMethod);

And obviously using the way described in the documentation Laravel Mocking Objects

use App\Service;
use Mockery\MockInterface;
 
$mock = $this->partialMock(Service::class, function (MockInterface $mock) {
    $mock->shouldReceive('process')->once();
});

None of these ideas work, $mockMyClass always executes the real method, not the mock method that should return $responseInternalMethod. Does anyone have this problem too? I need to confirm if it's an issue with Laravel, Mockito, or externally, and not the local environment, haha. I read you!

Technical details: Laravel 9.x PHP 8.1 PHP Unit 9.5 Taunt 1.5

Answer 1

Okay, I found the solution, but anyway, I'm interested to know if anyone has this problem too

My solution to this problem is:

public function testRealExternalMethod()
{
    // Create a mock of the dependency that will be used by the class
    $mockDependency = $this->createMock(Dependency::class);
    
    // in this case we need to use a partial mock because we have an internal method
    $mockMyClass = Mockery::mock(
        MyClass::class,
        [$mockDependency, $parameter1]
    )
        ->makePartial();

    $responseInternalMethod = ['needed data'];

    $mockMyClass->shouldReceive('internalMethod')
        ->andReturn($responseInternalMethod);

    $result = $mockMyClass->realExternalMethod($parameter2, $parameter3);
}

The solution for these cases is to directly create a mock instance of my class and pass all parameters required by the constructor as dependencies or data. Then continue the testing loop using the mock class as the real class.