Cloning paramaters in mocked methods/objects

[johnwards]

I've hit against an issue where I am expecting a paramater to be passed by reference in a mocked object and it isn't working. It seems that it is being cloned.

I created a Stack Overflow post on this as I wasn't sure if I was being silly.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5170747/pass-by-reference-in-a-callback-when-mocking-in-phpunit

Comment on the accepted answer suggested that feedback was needed on this cloning idea.

I would say that it is a bad idea based on this use case as its not expected. I'm not sure of the arguments for it so I can't really argue very hard.

[makasim]

I've expected to have the same object in callback and it was surprise for me to have a clone instead of it
And I agree here that it would be better to pass parameters as they are.

I don't see any good reasons to clone objects. Sebastian, Can you explain why it was done so.

[afonichev]

I was also very surprised I had cloned object in the mocked methods.
May be you have some reasons to create copy of parameters anyway. As I understood ideas behind mocking there is no needs to clone them.
Couldn't you remove cloning, Sebastian?

[zyxist]

I also agree that cloning is a very bad idea. This is not what we might expect from the testing procedure, especially that it is not a documented behaviour.

[kochuev]

Same for me. This does not look like a good idea to clone objects. Expected behaviour should be to provide the same object back.

[66Ton99]

Perhaps explanation of this this decision, will solve this problem?

I also prefer the same object to cloning

[tverdohleb]

Agreed. Don't clone the objects.

[vatson]

+1 Yeah

[zekefast]

+1 against cloning

[sebastianbergmann]

I do not remember the reasoning behind the decision to clone objects that are passed to mocked methods. For that I am truly sorry. The problem we have now is that changing this behavior would likely result in breaking tests for developers that rely on the fact that these objects are cloned.

A solution could be to make the cloning of objects that are passed to mocked methods optional. As most people seem to expect to not get a clone (which includes me, btw), the default should be to not clone objects that are passed to mocked methods. Developers that are affected by this BC break need to turn on the cloning on a test-by-test basis.

Any takers for implementing this?

[makasim]

Thanks for the explanation, I am happy to hear that you share our feelings.

I will try change the behavior.

[realmfoo]

What is the process of this issue?

[sebastianbergmann]

Closing because cloning method parameter will be optional soon (hopefully).