PHPUnit Mock Objects and Static Methods

Question

I am looking for the best way to go about testing the following static method (specifically using a Doctrine Model):

class Model_User extends Doctrine_Record         


        

Answer 1

Sebastian Bergmann, the author of PHPUnit, recently had a blog post about Stubbing and Mocking Static Methods. With PHPUnit 3.5 and PHP 5.3 as well as consistent use of late static binding, you can do

$class::staticExpects($this->any())
      ->method('helper')
      ->will($this->returnValue('bar'));

Update: staticExpects is deprecated as of PHPUnit 3.8 and will be removed completely with later versions.