Exceptions note clarification

[serbanghita]

https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/writing-tests-for-phpunit.html#writing-tests-for-phpunit.exceptions.examples.ErrorTest.php

There is a not on the link above saying:

You should be as specific as possible when testing exceptions. Testing for classes that are too generic might lead to undesirable side-effects. Accordingly, testing for the Exception class with @ExpectedException or setExpectedException() is no longer permitted.

I tested this and the tests pass:

<?php
namespace UnitTests\ExceptionsTest;

class MyClass
{
    protected $aString;

    public function __construct($aString)
    {
        if (empty($aString)) {
            throw new \Exception('Empty string provided.');
        }

        $this->aString = $aString;
    }

    public function checkString()
    {
        if (is_string($this->aString)) {
            return true;
        } else {
            throw new \Exception('This is not a string!');
        }
    }
}

<?php
use UnitTests\ExceptionsTest\MyClass;

class MyClassTest extends \PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase
{

    /**
     * instantiating the constructor with an empty string throws an exception
     * @expectedException \Exception
     */
    public function testInstantiatingTheConstructorWithAnEmptyStringThrowsAnException()
    {
        $myClass = new MyClass('');
    }


    /**
     * instantiating the constructor with a number and calling checkString will throw an exception
     * @expectedException \Exception
     */
    public function testInstantiatingTheConstructorWithANumberAndCallingCheckStringWillThrowAnException()
    {
        $myClass = new MyClass(11);
        $myClass->checkString();
    }


}

Aparently testing for Exception is permitted. I'm using:

$ php phpunit.phar -c tests/phpunit.xml
PHPUnit 4.6.4 by Sebastian Bergmann and contributors.

[sebastianbergmann]

Dear contributor,

thanks to the hard work by @belanur, @starikovm, @trueromio, and others, the changes outlined in #471 (comment) have been implemented.

This repository, https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit-documentation, is now archived and read-only. The documentation for PHPUnit version prior to PHPUnit 7.0 will no longer be changed or updated. It is still hosted at

• Multiple HTML files: https://phpunit.de/manual/6.5/en/index.html
• Multiple HTML files (in a .tar.bz2 archive): https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/download.tar.bz2
• Single HTML file: https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/phpunit-book.html
• PDF: https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/phpunit-book.pdf
• ePub: https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/phpunit-book.epub

Simply replace 6.5 with the version number you are looking for. Simply replace en with fr, pt_br, ja, or zh_cn to access the French, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese translation, respectively.

Starting with the documentation for PHPUnit 7.0, the PHPUnit documentation is hosted at https://phpunit.readthedocs.io/.

• The English documentation for PHPUnit is now maintained in the phpunit-documentation-english project
• The French documentation for PHPUnit is now maintained in the phpunit-documentation-french project
• The Brazilian Portuguese documentation for PHPUnit is now maintained in the phpunit-documentation-brazilian-portuguese project
• The Japanese documentation for PHPUnit is now maintained in the phpunit-documentation-japanese project
• The Simplified Chinese documentation for PHPUnit is now maintained in the phpunit-documentation-chinese project

I am sorry that I have to close this issue here as GitHub does not support moving issues from one project to another. Please open a new ticket for this issue in one of the new issue trackers (see above).