View type hinting

[ju5t]

Our app has an action class that creates a pdf with Browsershot. Instead of testing the final PDF, we want to verify that the view we pass to Browsershot contains the data we expect. A simplified version of our class will look like this:

class SomePdfAction
{
    // ...

    public function getView(): Illuminate\Contracts\View\Factory|Illuminate\Contracts\View\View
    {
        return view('some-pdf-view', ['param1' => $this-param]);
    }
}

As we return an object, we can't test it with $this->view('some-pdf-view'). As the helper expects a Blade-file as a sring, and not an object. Not a big deal as we can use TestView directly instead.

$action = new SomePdfAction();
$view = new TestView($action->getView());
$view->assertSee('foo');

Our test passes, but PHPStorm warns that we're passing the wrong type to TestView. TestView expects a View and we're passing a contract. You would think this is an easy fix. Change the return type of getView in the action class to a View and you're done. Sadly, PHPStorm then warns you about returning the wrong type in getView, as the view() helper returns something different.

Is there a reason why there are differences here?

[henzeb]

Use docblocks
Put the getView statement in a variable and add a docblock with @var statement above it.

[ju5t]

Thanks for your reply, but it doesn't answer my question of why there are differences in the view types. You would imagine that the return type of view() is the same as what the construct of TestView expects.

[henzeb]

Well, probably because they wanted access to gatherData which is not on the View contract, nor on any of the other contracts the View implementation is implementing. My guess is they didn't know they could use Closure::bind to access any parameters or methods inside the View implementation, or they considered this to much overhead for a unit test.

[ju5t]

That explains why TestView is more specific and requires a View object, I didn't know that. But what I don't understand is that view() has a docblock that says it returns the contract, while it actually does return the View object. Why that difference?

[henzeb]

They don't want you to know it's there, as it is not useful in normal situations. And they want to be flexible, hence the contract.