Problem with PHPUnit and Data Providers

Question

I have the following test case:

include_once('../Logger.php');

class LoggerTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase {

    public function providerLogger() {
        return new Logger;
    }

    /**
     * @dataProvider providerLogger
     */
    public function testAddStream($logger) {
        $this->assertTrue(false);
    }

}

When I run it in PHPUnit, I get:

PHPUnit 3.4.14 by Sebastian Bergmann.

..........

Time: 0 seconds, Memory: 5.75Mb

OK (1 tests, 0 assertions)

Test should fail, but it doesn't. I tried having:

public function providerLogger() {
    return array(new Logger);
}

But I get:

The data provider specified for LoggerTest::testAddStream is invalid.

I tried declaring it static (like the manual says), but still no difference.

I remember having it working in a similar fashion before, but I could be wrong. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance for your help.

PHPUnit 3.4.14 (taken from PEAR) on PHP 5.3.3

Answer 1

Minor update: It's OK to use instance methods as provider since version 3.2 (or somewhere around that). Have a look at the comments

---

The provider must look like this.

public static function providerLogger() {
    return array(
      array(new Logger)
    );
}

First of all: The method must be static if you are using phpunit version lower than 3.3 .

The array s are important. Its not that hard to understand. The outer array has one value for each iteration the test should get called. Here the test just get called once. The inner arrays are the parameters (in order) the test is invoked with. Your test expects exactly one parameter, so the inner arrays always needs exactly one value. Another little example

public static function addTestProvider () {
    return array(
        /* First + Second = third? */
        array(1,4,5),
        array(3,3,6),
        array(5,5,6)
    );
}
public function testAdd ($a, $b, $result) {
    $this->assertEquals($result, $a + $b);
}

Here testAdd gets executed 3 times, one for every second-level array, and it will receive the values from the inner array s. You may notice, that the test will fail and provides you a message in which iteration of the dataset (here #3, because 5+5 is not 6 ;)) the assertion failed.