I am new to unit testing, and testing at all...

I am trying to follow the repository implementation with pagination from the book 'Implementing Laravel' by Chris Fidao.

I have problem for the controller testing (code below): I undestand that I have to mock, the EloquentArticle repository, something like this:

$mock->shouldReceive('byPage')->once();
Paginator::shouldReceive('make')->once();
$this->call('GET', 'home');
$this->assertViewHas('articles');

But then I have an error on the controller that $pagiData is not an object (for $pagiData->items)

So my questionsare maybe trivial but

1. How to handle the returned value from the repository,
2. How to handle the Paginator returned value

Here is an example of a repository:

class EloquentArticle implements ArticleInterface {

    protected $article;
    public function __construct(Model $article)
    {
        $this->article = $article;
    }

    public function byPage($page=1, $limit=10)
    {
        $result = new \StdClass;
        $result->page = $page;
        $result->limit = $limit;
        $result->totalItems = 0;
        $result->items = array();

        $query = $this->article->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');

        $articles = $query->skip( $limit * ($page-1) )
                        ->take($limit)
                        ->get();

        $result->totalItems = $this->totalArticles($all);
        $result->items = $articles->all();

        return $result;
    }
}

and a controller action:

    public function home()
    {
        $page = Input::get('page', 1);
        $perPage = 3;
        $pagiData = $this->article->byPage($page, $perPage);

        $articles = Paginator::make($pagiData->items, $pagiData->totalItems, $perPage);

        $this->layout->content = View::make('home')->with('articles', $articles);
    }