> On Aug 6, 2024, at 2:09 AM, Nick Lockheart <li...@ageofdream.com> wrote:
>
> Sand Box: A first class API that allows unit testing of code with mocks
> and stubs of other classes or functions, without the need to modify the
> class under test.
>
> This is an initial idea of how a Sand Box API could work:
>
> $oSandbox = new SPLSandBox();
>
> $oSandbox->MockFunction('\mocks\fopen','\fopen');
> $oSandbox->MockFunction('\mocks\fread','\fread');
> $oSandbox->MockFunction('\mocks\fwrite','\fwrite');
> $oSandbox->MockFunction('\mocks\fclose','\fclose');
>
> $oFileManager = $oSandbox->GetInstance('MyFileManager');
>
> $oFileManager->WriteFile('/path/to/file.txt');
On the surface, this sounds like a good idea.
This is already possible to do in userland, with a few edge-cases. The
edge-cases are:
1. Anything that uses `self::class` or similar will break if it expects
`MyFileManager` to be returned instead of something like `MyFileManager_4k2x8j`.
2. Anything that expects a static variable in `MyFileManager` to have a
pre-existing value set but an earlier use of `MyFileManager` will not work as
expected. However, expecting that would be against testing best practices so I
don't see this as a real concern given your use-case.
OTOH, a userland implementation will also not be very performant when compared
to a potential PHP core implementation, making it less than ideal for testing.
However, doing a userland implementation would be a good proof-of-concept,
allow others to try it, allow others to contribute to the exact syntax and
semantics, and finally a userland implementation could reveal any potential
hidden issues in the design before moving on to a proper implementation in C
for PHP core.
-Mike
P.S. If you are unfamiliar with how to implement in userland you can use the
same techniques I used in my proof-of-concept for Userland Packages:
https://github.com/mikeschinkel/userland-packages. If that link is not enough
and you instead want to ask specific questions about how to implement in PHP,
feel free to contact me off-list.
