Why do we need to wrap test functions in a class? - python

I was studying unittest by following the examples here.
In the following code, def test_add() is supposed to be wrapped in class testClass(), but for my curiosity, I didn't encapsulate it.
# class testClass(unittest.TestCase):
def test_add(self):
result = cal_fun.add_fuc(5, 10)
self.assertEqual(result, 15)
if __name__ == '__main__':
unittest.main()
The result came out in VScode as:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 0 tests in 0.000s
OK
Why was no test run? Why must the def test_add() be wrapped in a class?

Here's an expansion on my initial comment.
The unittest module has a Test Discovery feature/function. When you run it on a directory, it looks for pre-defined structures, definitions, and patterns. Namely:
In order to be compatible with test discovery, all of the test files must be modules or packages (including namespace packages) importable from the top-level directory of the project (this means that their filenames must be valid identifiers).
The basic building blocks of unit testing are test cases — single scenarios that must be set up and checked for correctness. In unittest, test cases are represented by unittest.TestCase instances. To make your own test cases you must write subclasses of TestCase or use FunctionTestCase.
The relevant answer to your question is that test functions must be wrapped in a TestCase. Not simply wrapped in just some "class testClass()" as you said, but the class must specifically inherit from unittest.TestCase. In addition, that assertEqual method is only available as part of a TestCase, because it's a method of the TestCase class. If you somehow got that code of yours to run, self.assertEqual would result in an error. You would have to use plain assert's.
To go into more detail, you will have to read the section on unittest's load_tests Protocol and specifically the loadTestsFromModule(module, pattern=None) method:
Return a suite of all test cases contained in the given module. This method searches module for classes derived from TestCase and creates an instance of the class for each test method defined for the class.
Finally, it's not just about wrapping your test functions in a unittest.TestCase class, your tests must follow some pre-defined patterns:
By default, unittest looks for files matching the pattern test*.py. This is done by the discover(start_dir, pattern='test*.py', top_level_dir=None) method of unittest's TestLoader class, which is "used to create test suites from classes and modules".
By default, unittest looks for methods that start with test (ex. test_function). This is done by the testMethodPrefix attribute of unittest's TestLoader class, which is a "string giving the prefix of method names which will be interpreted as test methods. The default value is 'test'."
If you want some customized behavior, you'll have to override the load_tests protocol.

Related

Using Class inheritance while designing test suite

I have a requirement to implement a test suite for multiple functions.
I am trying to figure out best practices to leverage existing pytest design pattern.
There are 2-3 common test cases for all the functions
Each function require different presetup condition
My current design :
/utils
logic.py
/tests
Test_Regression.py
Sedan/
Test_Sedan.py
SUV/
Test_SUV.py
Hatchback/
Test_Hatchback.py
/config
Configuration.py
Current folder structure
Regression.py : This class holds common testcases
Test_SUV.py : This class inherits Test_Regression class test cases and has SUV specific test cases
Utils : This folder stores the program logic
is this a good design practice for a test suite to have class inheritance
class Regression:
#pytest.parameterize(x, utils.logic_func())
#pytest.mark.testengine
def test_engine(x,self):
#validates logic
assert x == 0
#pytest.parameterize(y, utils.logic_func())
#pytest.mark.testheadlight
def test_headlight(y,self):
#validates logic
assert y == 0
class Test_SUV(Test_Regression):
def get_engine_values():
# calls program logic
return x
.
.
.
.
Or is there a better way to structure these test cases.
Preconditions function can be annotated with #pytest.fixture and that can be used as parameter to the test methods instead of utility functions. You can define the scope (function, class, module, package or session) of these fixture functions: More details about fixture: https://docs.pytest.org/en/6.2.x/fixture.html
Pytest over unittest - one reason is you can avoid implicit class requirement and keep your tests simple and less verbose. And if you are adding class for pytest, then we are losing this benefit. IMHO, you can keep your common tests in regression module and avoid Regression class and Test Class inheritance, because this is going to be hard to maintain in long run.
Your tests should be independent from each other. If there is a common functionality that you want to share or inherit, you can do that via fixtures and keep them in a module called conftest.py and all those functions in conftest.py will then be available to all modules in the package and sub-packages More details about conftest

py.test does not find tests under a class

I am trying to create test classes that aren't unittest based.
This method under this class
class ClassUnderTestTests:
def test_something(self):
cannot be detected and run when you call py.test from the command line or when you run this test in PyCharm (it's on its own module).
This
def test_something(self):
same method outside of a class can be detected and run.
I'd like to group my tests under classes and unless I'm missing something I'm following the py.test spec to do that.
Environment: Windows 7, PyCharm with py.test set as the test runner.
By convention it searches for
Test prefixed test classes (without an init method)
eg.
# content of test_class.py
class TestClass:
def test_one(self):
x = "this"
assert 'h' in x
def test_two(self):
x = "hello"
assert hasattr(x, 'check')
# this works too
#staticmethod
def test_three():
pass
# this doesn't work
##classmethod
#def test_three(cls):
# pass
See the docs:
Group multiple tests in a class
Conventions for Python test discovery
The accepted answer is not incorrect, but it is incomplete. Also, the link it contains to the documentation no longer works, nor does the updated link in the a comment on that answer.
The current documentation can now be found here. The relevant bits of that doc are:
...
In those directories, search for test_*.py or *_test.py files, imported by their test package name.
From those files, collect test items:
...
test prefixed test functions or methods inside Test prefixed test classes (without an __init__ method)
The key bit that is missing in the accepted answer is that not only must the class name start with Test and not have an __init__ method, but also, the name of the file containing the class MUST be of one of the forms test_*.py or *_test.py.
Where I got tripped up here, and I assume many others will too, is that I generally name my Python source files containing only a class definition to directly mirror the name of the class. So if my class is named MyClass, I normally put its code in a file named MyClass.py. I then put test code for my class in a file named TestMyClass.py. This won't work with PyTest. To let PyTest do its thing with my test class, I need to name the file for this class test_MyClass.py or MyClass_test.py. I chose the last form so that I generally add a '_test' suffix to the file names I'd otherwise choose that need to be named so that PyTest will parse them looking for tests.

Python unittest setUp function

I am relatively new to Python. According to unittest.setUp documentation:
setUp()
Method called to prepare the test fixture. This is called immediately before calling the test method; any exception raised by this method will be considered an error rather than a test failure. The default implementation does nothing.
My question about setUp is as follows:
In our testing code base, I have seen that we customized the Python testing framework by inheriting from unittest.TestCase. Originally, unittest.TestCase has names setUp and tearDown.In the customized class, we have setUpTestCase and tearDownTestCase. So each time those two functions will be called instead of those original counterparts.
My questions are:
How are those setUp and tearDown functions being called by the underlying test runner?
Is it required that those functions used to set up test cases should start with setUp and functions used to tear down test cases should start with tearDown? Or it can be named as any valid identifier?
Thank you.
setUp() and tearDown() methods are automatically used when they are available in your classes inheriting from unittest.TestCase.
They should be named setUp() and tearDown(), only those are used when test methods are executed.
Example:
class MyTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.setUpMyStuff()
def tearDown(self):
self.tearDownMyStuff()
class TestSpam(MyTestCase):
def setUpMyStuff(self):
# called before execution of every method named test_...
self.cnx = # ... connect to database
def tearDownMyStuff(self):
# called after execution of every method named test_...
self.cnx.close()
def test_get_data(self):
cur = self.cnx.cursor()
...

How can I create a class-scoped test fixture in pyUnit?

I am unit testing mercurial integration and have a test class which currently creates a repository with a file and a clone of that repository in its setUp method and removes them in its tearDown method.
As you can probably imagine, this gets quite performance heavy very fast, especially if I have to do this for every test individually.
So what I would like to do is create the folders and initialize them for mercurial on loading the class, so each and every unittest in the TestCase class can use these repositories. Then when all the tests are run, I'd like to remove them. The only thing my setUp and tearDown methods then have to take care of is that the two repositories are in the same state between each test.
Basically what I'm looking for is a python equivalent of JUnit's #BeforeClass and #AfterClass annotations.
I've now done it by subclassing the TestSuite class, since the standard loader wraps all the test methods in an instance of the TestCase in which they're defined and puts them together in a TestSuite. I have the TestSuite call the before() and after() methods of the first TestCase. This of course means that you can't initialize any values to your TestCase object, but you probably want to do this in your setUp anyway.
The TestSuite looks like this:
class BeforeAfterSuite(unittest.TestSuite):
def run(self, result):
if len(self._tests) < 1:
return unittest.TestSuite.run(self, result)
first_test = self._tests[0]
if "before" in dir(first_test):
first_test.before()
result = unittest.TestSuite.run(self, result)
if "after" in dir(first_test):
first_test.after()
return result
For some slightly more finegrained control I also created the custom TestLoader which makes sure the BeforeAfterSuite is only used to wrap test-method-TestCase objects in, which looks like this:
class BeforeAfterLoader(unittest.TestLoader):
def loadTestsFromTestCase(self, testCaseClass):
self.suiteClass = BeforeAfterSuite
suite = unittest.TestLoader.loadTestsFromTestCase(self, testCaseClass)
self.suiteClass = unittest.TestLoader.suiteClass
return suite
Probably missing here is a try/except block around the before and after which could fail all the testcases in the suite or something.
from the Python unittest documentation :
setUpClass() :
A class method called before tests in an individual class run. setUpClass is called with the class as the only argument and must be decorated as a classmethod():
#classmethod
def setUpClass(cls):
...
New in version 2.7.
tearDownClass() :
A class method called after tests in an individual class have run. tearDownClass is called with the class as the only argument and must be decorated as a classmethod():
#classmethod
def tearDownClass(cls):
...

how do I repeat python unit tests on different data?

I am testing classes that parse XML and create DB objects (for a Django app).
There is a separate parser/creater class for each different XML type that we read (they all create essentially the same objects). Each parser class has the same superclass so they all have the same interface.
How do I define one set of tests, and provide a list of the parser classes, and have the set of tests run using each parser class? The parser class would define a filename prefix so that it reads the proper input file and the desired result file.
I want all the tests to be run (it shouldn't stop when one breaks), and when one breaks it should report the parser class name.
With nose, you can define test generators. You can define the test case and then write a test generator which will yield one test function for each parser class.
If you are using unittest, which has the advantage of being supported by django and installed on most systems, you can do something like:
class TestBase(unittest.TestCase)
testing_class = None
def setUp(self):
self.testObject = testing_class(foo, bar)
and then to run the tests:
for cls in [class1, class2, class3]:
testclass = type('Test'+cls.__name, (TestBase, ), {'testing_class': cls})
suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromTestCase(testclass)
unittest.TextTestRunner(verbosity=2).run(suite)
I haven't tested this code but I've done stuff like this before.

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