Comments on: Interfaces Make Testing Easier

By: sokzzuka

sokzzuka — Thu, 27 May 2010 08:15:43 +0000

@giorgio: I know, but I konsider it as an ugly hack. I don’t like eval – it’s slow, unpredictable and dangerous. That’s way they added lambda’s instead of create_function in 5.3.

@jory: interface defines a role that a class will fulfil, that’s why you test roles not classes…

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:58:50 +0000

You might wanna read up on mock vs. stub objects, there’s more to mock objects than it seems, but usually only stubs are implemented (which is a shame).

By: Jory Geerts

Jory Geerts — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:59:20 +0000

“Since an interface already defines the majority of the public API, developers can feel comfortable that the methods they need will be implemented in each mock object they’re given, so long as it implements that interface.”
Well not really. If the interface defines just the majority of the public API, you still can’t be sure you’re implementing everything you need.

An interface should define the entire (public) API. (Or rather, an implementation shouldn’t add any public methods.) Then and only then do they have any kind of use.

By: Giorgio Sironi

Giorgio Sironi — Wed, 26 May 2010 18:21:41 +0000

sozzuka, PHPUnit uses exactly eval() to generate mocks.
Anyway, usually the choice for testing authentication in ZF applications is to use Zend_Test, which will set Zend_Session to a sort of “testing mode” since it is a singleton and cannot be substituted for now. Things will change in 2.x.

By: sokzzuka

sokzzuka — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:41:06 +0000

I just wish that there could be a way to dynamically create a class that implements some interface other than eval() and code generation.

Generally you have a good point at using interfaces. Most people doesn’t understand what they are meant for, maybe it’s because they lack of knowledge of software engineering.