Add event contract tests for emitted events

[avandenberghe]

Summary

The six avathar.recenttopicsav.* events and three paybas.recenttopics.* deprecated aliases documented in contrib/Events.md have no executable verification. Any refactor of core/recenttopics.php could silently break the public API that downstream extensions depend on.

What to test

For each emitted event (sql_pull_topics_list, sql_pull_topics_data, modify_topics_list, topictitle_remove_re, modify_topictitle, modify_tpl_ary):

1. Event fires — the dispatcher receives a trigger_event call with the exact event name
2. Correct variables are present — the event data contains the documented keys
3. Modifications are picked up — a listener that modifies a variable has its changes reflected in the output after extract() (proves the API contract end-to-end)

For the three paybas.recenttopics.* aliases additionally verify:

• They fire after their avathar.recenttopicsav.* counterpart
• Changes made by a new-style listener are visible to the legacy listener (shared state through sequential extract())

Approach

Use a real phpbb\event\dispatcher with inline listeners registered in the test, exercising core\recenttopics directly. No need for a full database — mock the DB and inject fixture data where needed.

Why this matters

contrib/Events.md is the documented API contract. These tests are the executable version of that contract. Without them a variable rename or a moved trigger_event call breaks every downstream extension with no CI failure.

References

• contrib/Events.md — full event documentation
• core/recenttopics.php lines 588, 645, 705, 792, 802, 873 — event dispatch locations

[avandenberghe]

Implemented

Created tests/core/recenttopics_events_test.php with 17 test methods covering all 6 emitted events and the 3 legacy aliases.

Test class design

test_event_dispatcher — a real (non-mock) dispatcher implementing phpbb\event\dispatcher_interface. Listeners actually run through the full trigger_event → dispatch → extract() cycle, which is the only way to verify the API contract end-to-end.

Reflection helpers — call_private() and set_private() reach the private methods and properties of core\recenttopics without touching production code.

Global function stubs — censor_text, topic_status, append_sid, get_username_string are defined with function_exists() guards. If the phpBB test bootstrap already loaded the real functions they are used; otherwise the no-op stubs keep the tests focused on event dispatch.

Coverage per event

Event	Fires	Vars present	Modification applied	Alias order
sql_pull_topics_list	✓	sql_array	✓	—
sql_pull_topics_data	✓	sql_array	✓	new before paybas.* ✓
modify_topics_list	✓	topic_list, rowset	—	new before paybas.* ✓
topictitle_remove_re	✓	row	—	—
modify_topictitle	✓	row, prefix	prefix → TOPIC_TITLE ✓	—
modify_tpl_ary	✓	row, tpl_ary, core vars	added key → template ✓	new before paybas.* ✓, shared state ✓

Verification pending CI run on the develop33 branch.