Php – On implementing a dynamic proxy in PHP

It looks like you are having a design issue here: Tables should not extend the Database Abstraction Layer. Instead the DAL should be injected into the table as a dependency.

abstract class Table {
    protected $dal;

    public function __construct(DAL $dal) {
        $this->dal = $dal;
    }

    // whatever else all tables have in common
}

class Table_User extends Table {
    public function someMethod() {
        $this->dal->someOtherMethod();
    }
}

$table = new MyTable($dal);
$table->someMethod();

That way you will create a DAL at some upper scope and pass it down. This will also allow you to use multiple different database engines at the same time.

Additionally you obviously should not create your tables directly in your controller but let a specialized class do that. For example you could use a factory:

class TableFactory {
    protected $dal;

    public function __construct(DAL $dal) {
        $this->dal = $dal;
    }

    public function createTable($name) {
        $className = 'Table_' . $name;
        return new $className($this->dal);
    }
}

That way you can create a table factory at some point with an injected DAL and pass that table factory around.

$table = $factory->createTable('User');

The answer to this question "are mocks in unit tests dangerous in dynamic languages?" is "Hell yes!"

The following article explains the dangers.

They describe a scenario where an interfaces method name changed. For example, changing a methods name from error() to errors(). If we are mocking the error() method in our tests, they will never turn red to alert us that we have a problem.

Instead, mocks should be used sparingly. Behaviours of the unit under test should be tested rather than testing implementation details, which happens as a consequence of using mocks in unit tests. Real classes should be used as dependencies, instead of an over reliance on mocks.