PHP Laravel tests using mocking

I am writing tests for my repository, and I have a page() method that takes a PaginationQuery object which consists of limit, direction and cursor for a specific model and returns a json paginator object, I am struggling with the mocking, here is my code:

My repository code:

   public function page(PaginationQuery $pagination)
    {
        $paginator = new Paginator($this->model);
        return $paginator->paginate($pagination->limit(), $pagination->direction(), $pagination->cursor());
    }

My test:

public function test_paging_with_mocking()
{
    // seed articles
    $seededArticles = [
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 1']),
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 2']),
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 3']),
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 4']),
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 5']),
        new Article(['title' => 'Article 6']),
    ];

    foreach ($seededArticles as $seededArticle) {
        $seededArticle->save();
    }

    $limit =  PaginationQuery::defaultLimit();
    $direction = PaginationQuery::defaultDirection();
    $cursor = PaginationQuery::defaultCursor();

    $pagination = new PaginationQuery($limit, $direction, $cursor);

    $mPaginator = M::mock(Paginator::class);
    $mPaginator->shouldReceive('paginate')->with($limit, $direction, $cursor)->andReturn([]);

    $receivedResult = $this->repo->page($pagination);
}

I need to achieve a couple of things here:

• to test the page() method while mocking the paginator since I don't care here about the output, I only need to assert that the limit, direction and cursor values are being passed correctly to the paginate() method.

• I also need to inject the paginator class in page() method since mocking a new instance of a class will cause an error in mocking this class

• in this line of the test $mPaginator->shouldReceive('paginate')->with($limit, $direction, $cursor)->andReturn([]); I need to add once() but when doing so I am getting the following error:

  should be called exactly 1 times but called 0 times