How do you unit test private methods?

Question

I\'m building a class library that will have some public & private methods. I want to be able to unit test the private methods (mostly while developing, but also it coul

Answer 1

I want to create a clear code example here which you can use on any class in which you want to test private method.

In your test case class just include these methods and then employ them as indicated.

  /**
   *
   * @var Class_name_of_class_you_want_to_test_private_methods_in
   * note: the actual class and the private variable to store the 
   * class instance in, should at least be different case so that
   * they do not get confused in the code.  Here the class name is
   * is upper case while the private instance variable is all lower
   * case
   */
  private $class_name_of_class_you_want_to_test_private_methods_in;

  /**
   * This uses reflection to be able to get private methods to test
   * @param $methodName
   * @return ReflectionMethod
   */
  protected static function getMethod($methodName) {
    $class = new ReflectionClass('Class_name_of_class_you_want_to_test_private_methods_in');
    $method = $class->getMethod($methodName);
    $method->setAccessible(true);
    return $method;
  }

  /**
   * Uses reflection class to call private methods and get return values.
   * @param $methodName
   * @param array $params
   * @return mixed
   *
   * usage:     $this->_callMethod('_someFunctionName', array(param1,param2,param3));
   *  {params are in
   *   order in which they appear in the function declaration}
   */
  protected function _callMethod($methodName, $params=array()) {
    $method = self::getMethod($methodName);
    return $method->invokeArgs($this->class_name_of_class_you_want_to_test_private_methods_in, $params);
  }

$this->_callMethod('_someFunctionName', array(param1,param2,param3));

Just issue the parameters in the order that they appear in the original private function