Jessica Mauerhan: The Five Types of Test Doubles & How to Create Them in PHPUnit

Jessica Mauerhan has a tutorial posted to her site that covers the five types of test doubles in PHPUnit and how to use them in your tests. Test "doubles" - the most common one being a mock - are useful for simulating resources or other objects required to test units of code without external interactions.

Did you know that a Mock is only one type of a test double? Most of us use the word “mock” to mean any kind of test double, but there’s actually five different types. It really can help you understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your test if you know a little bit more what you’re doing with your test doubles, so this article will explain the kinds of test doubles, when you use them, how you use them and why.

She starts the post with a brief definition of the term "test double" and then covers each of the five with descriptions and example code:

• Dummy
• Stub
• Spy
• Mock
• Fake

While some of the functionality is similar between the types, she defines their differences and the cases where each would be most useful.