Questioning the use of static calls to assert* methods

[JoolsMcFly]

Hi all.

Pretty much everywhere in doc pages involving tests, calls made to assert* methods are not static but use $this.
Any reason not to use self::assert*?

Example: https://symfony.com/doc/6.4/form/unit_testing.html
self::assertTrue($form->isSynchronized());

instead of
$this->assertTrue($form->isSynchronized());

?

Thanks!

[MrYamous]

Hello,

Sometimes self:assert is used too, in HTTPClient doc for example
I don't think there's a specific guideline about which one to use in the documentation. Sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another.
But maybe it's something that could be standardized

[JoolsMcFly]

Hi.

If it's something I can help with let me know. I'd gladly give it a go.

[javiereguiluz]

In 6.4 branch, there are only 7 occurrences of self::assert and 74 occurrences of $this->assert.

But, as @JoolsMcFly said, the most correct form would be self::assert. So, I agree on making this change.

Let's ask the other Symfony Docs Team members what do they think: @OskarStark, @xabbuh, @wouterj. Thanks!

[xabbuh]

Not using self:: is in line with the Symfony coding style. IIRC that's the reason why most of the usages in the docs are this way.

[wouterj]

Historically projects used $this->assertX for PHPunit test (I guess they were non-static in the older versions?). I think the common PHP developer is much more used to the non-static call variant.

Besides that, it is also still what the PHPunit documentation uses and there are no plans to changing that. So I'm 👍 for making them all consistent to $this->assertX().

[OskarStark]

Let's use $this to be consistent and in line with the code base.

In my projects I also use the static ones

[javiereguiluz]

The consensus is to standardize into non-static methods, so I created #20405 to change the few static assert calls. Thanks!