There has always been a war between testers, who love mocking all classes, and library developers, who prevent misusing their code by means of final keyword. You cannot do both. Once a class (or method) is declared as final, it cannot be mocked (extended). Since testers need to test their applications built on top of 3rd party libraries, they always play second turn in this war. That's unlucky, since once a final is made, it cannot be defeated.
Or can it?
Reflection – extended
Here I present a mighty weapon for all the testers; or rather just a prototype for now. It gives you the power to remove existing final from classes/methods and thus make them mockable. Here is how to use it:
final class B { ... }
$refl = new ReflectionClass('B');
$refl->setFinal(false);
// follow the link above for more examplesVoilà, the class is not final anymore and you can mock it freely.
How to
A patch for PHP is needed atm, as this is an experimental feature. The syntax is also experimental, please add your suggestions.
PS: This idea was presented by @JanTvrdik on Nette Brain Cloud meeting.
