Accessing Members

Some classes keep state in private or protected properties, and some behavior lives in private methods. Testing only through the public API is the preferred approach, but a unit test sometimes needs to set up a state or check an internal value that the public API does not expose. The TestAccessorTrait provides getValue(), setValue(), and invoke() for these cases. They delegate to ReflectAccessor in windwalker/utilities, which reads the member through reflection and ignores its visibility.

Minimal Setup

Add the trait to a test case, then call the methods on the test instance:

use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Windwalker\Test\Traits\TestAccessorTrait;

class CounterTest extends TestCase
{
    use TestAccessorTrait;
}

Showcase: Setting Up a Private State

The following test prepares a private counter, runs a private method, and checks the result. The Counter class is the code under test:

use App\Counter;
use PHPUnit\Framework\Attributes\Test;
use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase;
use Windwalker\Test\Traits\TestAccessorTrait;

class CounterTest extends TestCase
{
    use TestAccessorTrait;

    #[Test]
    public function incrementAddsToPrivateCount(): void
    {
        $counter = new Counter();

        $this->setValue($counter, 'count', 10);
        $this->invoke($counter, 'increment', 5);

        self::assertEquals(15, $this->getValue($counter, 'count'));
    }
}

Reading and Writing Properties

• getValue(object $obj, string $name) returns the value of a property, whatever its visibility.
• setValue(object $obj, string $name, mixed $value) assigns a value to a property.

$this->setValue($cache, 'driver', $driverStub);

$items = $this->getValue($cache, 'items');

The methods declare ReflectionException in their docblocks, so a missing property or method fails the test with that exception.

Calling Methods

invoke(object $obj, string $method, ...$args) calls a method, including a private one, and returns its result:

$key = $this->invoke($router, 'normalizePath', '/Users/');

self::assertEquals('/users', $key);

Notes on Use

WARNING

Reflection bypasses visibility, so a test that changes private state can pass while the public behavior is broken. Use these helpers to set up a state that the public API cannot reach, and assert the public behavior whenever you can.

The class TestHelper in this package is deprecated. It extends ReflectAccessor, so new tests should use the trait or call Windwalker\Utilities\Reflection\ReflectAccessor directly.