Category: BDD

I’m a huge fan of PHPSpec, and its close cousin, Behat. I find when writing code in conjunction with PHPSpec, I am able to enter a rhythm that I have never found with any other tool.

I particularly enjoy the code generation functionality – describe some action, do a bin/phpspec run and have your methods created for you as you go. It really is quite a joy to use.

However, as with any tool, there is a learning curve.

I found the basics – the stuff described in the manual – to be straightforward enough that even when stuck, I could relatively quickly find my way through and get back on track.

Then, recently, I decided to build an application involving third party / social media providers for authentication using HWIOAuthBundle.

Along the way, I added the concept of a User object having a Collection (Doctrine\Common\Collections\Collection) of Account objects. Fairly common stuff, particularly if you have ever used Symfony at all.

The very basic idea would be something like this:

<?php

namespace AppBundle\OAuth\Connect;

use HWI\Bundle\OAuthBundle\OAuth\Response\UserResponseInterface;
use HWI\Bundle\OAuthBundle\Security\Core\User\FOSUBUserProvider as BaseClass;
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\UserManagerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
use Symfony\Component\Security\Core\User\UserInterface;

class ProfileConnector extends BaseClass
{
    /**
     * @var RequestStack
     */
    private $requestStack;

    public function injectRequestStack(RequestStack $requestStack)
    {
        $this->requestStack = $requestStack;
    }

    public function connect(UserInterface $user, UserResponseInterface $response)
    {
        $req = $this->requestStack->getMasterRequest();

        if ( ! $req->request->has('profiles')) {
            return false;
        }

        $selectedProfiles = $req->request->get('profiles');

        /** @var $user \AppBundle\Entity\User */
        /** @var $profile \AppBundle\Model\ProfileInterface */
        foreach ($user->getProfiles() as $profile) {
            if ( ! array_key_exists($profile->getId(), $selectedProfiles)) {
                continue;
            }
        }

        // something else here
        return true;
    }
}

 

This is a work in progress, so if it looks a little rough… hey, that’s why I do TDD. The refactoring will come in time.

Seeing the tests would likely also help:

<?php

namespace spec\AppBundle\OAuth\Connect;

use Doctrine\Common\Collections\ArrayCollection;
use PhpSpec\ObjectBehavior;
use Prophecy\Argument;
use HWI\Bundle\OAuthBundle\OAuth\Response\UserResponseInterface;
use FOS\UserBundle\Model\UserManagerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack;
use AppBundle\Model\ProfileInterface;
use AppBundle\Entity\Profile;
use AppBundle\Entity\User;
use AppBundle\Entity\SocialMediaAccount;

class ProfileConnectorSpec extends ObjectBehavior
{
    private $user;
    private $response;

    function let(UserManagerInterface $userManager, User $user, UserResponseInterface $userResponse)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
        $this->response = $userResponse;

        $this->beConstructedWith($userManager, []);
    }

    function it_is_initializable()
    {
        $this->shouldHaveType('AppBundle\OAuth\Connect\ProfileConnector');
        $this->beAnInstanceOf('HWI\Bundle\OAuthBundle\Security\Core\User\FOSUBUserProvider');
    }

    function it_can_inject_the_request_stack()
    {
        $this->injectRequestStack(new RequestStack());
    }

    function it_can_handle_no_profile_accounts_being_selected()
    {
        $requestStack = new RequestStack();
        $requestStack->push(new Request());

        $this->injectRequestStack($requestStack);

        $this->connect($this->user, $this->response)->shouldReturn(false);
    }

    function it_can_connect_one_account_to_a_social_media_service(User $user, Profile $profile)
    {
        $profile->getId()->willReturn(16);
        $profiles = new ArrayCollection([$profile->getWrappedObject()]);

        $user->getProfiles()->willReturn($profiles);

        $requestStack = new RequestStack();
        $requestStack->push(new Request([], ['profiles'=>[16=>'on']]));

        $this->injectRequestStack($requestStack);

        $this->connect($user, $this->response)->shouldReturn(true);
    }

    function it_can_connect_multiple_accounts_to_a_social_media_service()
    {

    }
}

This is absolutely a work in progress. I even left in the last test, yet to be started.

As a quick side note, for the first time I have decided to declare commonly required objects by way of the let() method. I am not absolutely sure whether or not this is good practice, but it does seem to work as I intended it too. If you know differently, do let me know by way of leaving a comment – thanks !

Currently the tests are passing – with the exception of the pending example still to write.

What may be less obvious is how much effort I went through to get the it_can_connect_one_account_to_a_social_media_service() example to play ball.

I’ve spent a good few hours these past few evenings trying to figure out this error:

AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnector
  51  - it can connect one account to a social media service
      warning: array_key_exists(): The first argument should be either a string or an integer in
      /var/www/myproj/src/AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnector.php line 46

When I was seeing this error, the problematic test actually looked like this:

function it_can_connect_one_account_to_a_social_media_service(User $user, Profile $profile)
{
    $profile->getId()->willReturn(16);
    $user->addProfile($profile);

    $requestStack = new RequestStack();
    $requestStack->push(new Request([], ['profiles'=>[16=>'on']]));

    $this->injectRequestStack($requestStack);

    $this->connect($user, $this->response)->shouldReturn(true);
}

A bit of Google-foo told me I was likely going about this entirely the wrong way:

When the creator of PHPSpec tells you (indirectly) that you are wrong, then… you are wrong.

I could actually see the problem – the implementation seemed correct, but PHPSpec sees my call $profile->getId() as returning an Object, and then throwing an error something along the lines of :

AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnector
  51  - it can connect one account to a social media service
      error: Object of class Prophecy\Prophecy\MethodProphecy could not be converted to string in
      /var/www/myproj/src/AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnector.php line 44

At first I figured… ok, well I won’t mock the User object – I can new that up – but when trying to add a mock Profile to the real collection, it all went a bit wrong:

AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnector
  50  - it can connect one account to a social media service
      error: Argument 1 passed to AppBundle\Entity\User::addProfile() must implement interface
      AppBundle\Model\ProfileInterface, instance of PhpSpec\Wrapper\Collaborator given, called in
      /var/www/myproj/spec/AppBundle/OAuth/Connect/ProfileConnectorSpec.php on line 54 and defined in
      /var/www/myproj/src/AppBundle/Entity/User.php line 44

That’s fine, I thought, I will use a real Profile object as well, because why not?

Well, I’ll tell you why not.

The test expects my Profile object to have an id of 16. I’m not about to add in a setId() method, that would be bonkers.

At heart, I knew as soon as I started adding in real objects that I was heading down the wrong path.

Generally I find that when PHPSpec is making your life hard it is because you are trying to do the wrong thing. Sooner or later you must stop resisting.

Anyway, after quite a bit a lot of further hackery, I managed to find a working solution (as per the earlier sample):

    function it_can_connect_one_account_to_a_social_media_service(User $user, Profile $profile)
    {
        $profile->getId()->willReturn(16);
        $profiles = new ArrayCollection([$profile->getWrappedObject()]);

        $user->getProfiles()->willReturn($profiles);

        $requestStack = new RequestStack();
        $requestStack->push(new Request([], ['profiles'=>[16=>'on']]));

        $this->injectRequestStack($requestStack);

        $this->connect($user, $this->response)->shouldReturn(true);
    }

When I think about it now, it does make sense. This is similar to what I was trying to do, only this way conforms with the way PHPSpec expects me to behave 🙂

Both the User and Profile objects are properly mocked, but as per Everzet’s comment, we are returning a real ArrayCollection, which by way of $profile->getWrappedObject() will return the underlying Profile objects, rather than the PHPSpec wrapped objects / Object Prophecies.

This is exactly the sort of problem that my brother – an aspiring coder – would think I “just knew” how to fix. And that he should also be expected to know how to solve instinctively also.

Of course, the next time this comes up, I will know exactly how to solve it. It’s just if you were sat watching over my shoulder, you wouldn’t imagine the hours of my life that lesson took to learn 😉