Background

I have a system with a microservices setup. A few of these microservices run a laravel installation. In order to share some key models, a repo was shared using git/packagist.

Here is a diagram:

• Microservice A
• Microservice B
• ...

These both share Library C. This library has the shared models. This is outside of a normal laravel installation, but the composer includes "laravel/framework": "^9.0".

Note: There good external reasons to share the functionality - the microservices have come out of a monolith and are still developing fluidly and are not mature enough for a complete decoupling. This will come in time.

I wish to unit test these models.

Specifics

The requirement is that several models (User, Customer .. etc) all require addresses. Normalising these out would introduce complexity elsewhere that is not appropriate yet, so a trait is good for now. These have UK postcodes that require a specific validation against a database. Postcodes are modelled using a Postcode model.

I created a trait : AddressTrait. This offers some useful functionality. Included in this is a Postcode validation. This intercepts a set request in laravel (eg: $user->postcode = 'AB10 1AB)

    /**
     * Automatically updates the log/lat from the postcode
     * @param $value
     */
    public function setPostcodeAttribute($value): void
    {
        // update postcode
        $this->attributes['postcode'] = strtoupper($value);

        // now update lat/long
        $postcode = Postcode::where('pcd', '=', str_replace(' ', '', $value))
            ->orWhere('pcd', '=', $value)
            ->first();

        if ($postcode) {
            $this->attributes['latitude'] = $postcode->latitude;
            $this->attributes['longitude'] = $postcode->longitude;
        }
    }

This works as expected. Note - it is to be extended quite a bit further with much more complexity, but this is step 1 and completely represents the problem.

Testing

If I interact with the postcode attribute, such as $user->postcode = 'AB10 1AB, this attempts to load the Postcode from the database, and the following error occurs:

• Error : Call to a member function connection() on null

^ This is expected.

I would like to unit test this: ie. no reaching out the class and mocking system/functional elements. Thus, I need to mock the Postcode load (Postcode::where(..) .. ).

As this is a static call, I have used mockery ("mockery/mockery": "dev-master").

Here is the current attempt:

// ...

use Mockery;
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;

// ...

    public function testPostcodeProcessing(): void
    {
        $postcode_value = 'AB10 1AB';
        $postcode_content = [
            'pcd' => $postcode_value,
            'latitude' => '0.1',
            'longitude' => '0.2'
        ];

        $mock_postcode = Mockery::mock(Postcode::class);
        $mock_postcode->shouldReceive('where')->once()->andReturn($mock_postcode);
        $mock_postcode->shouldReceive('orWhere')->once()->andReturn($mock_postcode);
        $mock_postcode->shouldReceive('first')->once()->andReturn($postcode_content);

        $model = $this->createTraitImplementedClass();
        $model->postcode = $postcode_value;
    }


    protected function createTraitImplementedClass(): Model
    {
        return new class extends Model {
            use AddressTrait;
        };
    }

TLDR question

I would like to unit test this function: ie. no reaching out the class and mocking.

• How do I mock a laravel/eloquent static call, given that:
  • this is to be tested outside laravel
  • there is no database connection

OR

• How do I refactor this to allow it to be more testable

Super TLDR;

How do I mock the load in:

    public function tldr(): void
    {
	    //  this eloquent lookup needs to be mocked (not moved, refactored etc etc..)
        $postcode = Postcode::where('pcd', '=', 'AB10 1AB')->first();
    }

Notes:

• These are unit tests
• I would prefer to do this "the laravel way", but given the unusual circumstances things such as mockery might make sense
• May be a gotcha: I am using the phpunit PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase - not the usual PHP test case. This is not a "requirement", but I imagined a mock shouldn't need the extended features.
• The answer "just refactor the static call to a different class" misses the point. I'll need to test THAT later.

Any help with this would be appreciated!