In Testbox, for integration testing, is it possible to mock objects that are called from a handler prior to the

execute

call of the handler?

I have to say... despite using TestBox since it had a

0

as a major version I don't know how to interpret "handler" or the execution thereof?

Hey Adam! A handler is a controller in Coldbox MVC land. Give me a bit and I'll write up something more detailed.

Ah

Ok, first of all, I have a pretty good grasp of mocking for unit tests. So I understand mocking in that context. A typical unit test I'm running extends

coldbox.system.testing.BaseModelTest

. Then in

beforeAll()

I do something like

calculatorService = createMock( "models.CalculatorService" );

for the model under test. Then

calculatorData = createEmptyMock( "models.CalculatorData" );

which is where a sql query resides and I, of course, don't want to hit the actual database in a unit test. To mock the DI of the calculatorData into the service

calculatorService.$property( propertyName="calculatorData", mock=calculatorData );

Then in the test itself I can use

querySim()

to simulate a query and use that to mock the method in the data layer

calculatorData.$(  "getData", querySimData );

Then I simply run the method in the calculatorService that I want to test that calls the mocked data layer. All this works great. However, now I want to do something similar in a Coldbox handler, which is typically where an integration test would be used (or so I understand). I've had some success with handlers that have form data passed in. I've been doing something like

getRequestContext().setValue( "employeeName", "Joe Chastain" );

which sets the value in the rc scope for a variable named

employeeName

. Then

var event = execute( event="main.calculate", renderResults=true );

to execute the handler. Then I can check the rendered results for various things. Again, this works great. But now I want to be able to mock objects that the handler calls. This is different from the unit test because instead of creating a mock object to test, the

execute

method is called. I've not yet been able to figure out how to set the mocked object as a property of the handler because of this difference.

Being context neutral, I presume CB keeps all its dependencies in a WB container? And I presume the integration test approach uses an loaded app with its DI container etc? Can you pull the handler out of the container and mock it?

Good thoughts and thanks for the link. I'll take a look and play around with it some more.

That sounds like gold. Sorta thing I'd like to attend, but... my CFML indulgence this year might be CFCamp.

Nice! I've never been. I was at the CF Summit in Vegas pre-pandemic but haven't attended a conference in-person since. Really quite excited for it — especially that workshop since right now testing is the bee in my programming bonnet.

I enjoy the corridors &... erm... the bar... more than I do the presentations. But that workshop sounds good.