# Mocking Protected Methods

By default, Mockery does not allow mocking protected methods. We do not recommend mocking protected methods, but there are cases when there is no other solution.

For those cases we have the `shouldAllowMockingProtectedMethods()` method. It instructs Mockery to specifically allow mocking of protected methods, for that one class only:

    class MyClass
    {
        protected function foo()
        {
        }
    }

    $mock = \Mockery::mock('MyClass')
        ->shouldAllowMockingProtectedMethods();
    $mock->shouldReceive('foo');