[TIP] unittest issues and development

[Michael Foord]

On 11/02/2010 00:20, Fernando Perez wrote:
> [snip...]
>>> as well as top-level names for the various
>>> assertions?  Nose.tools does that in a very simple but useful manner
>>> that makes lightweight (non-class-based) tests really nice to write:
>>>
>>> def test_foo():
>>>    nose.tools.assert_equals(bar, baz, 'nice message)
>>>
>>>        
>> I've never seen the advantage of this over self.assertEquals (ignoring the
>> PEP 8 issue...). :-)
>>      
> Ah, they matter if you aren't writing a class: there is no 'self' in
> the function above.  One very nice thing about such tests in the
> contexts I work in (scientists who don't necessarily care or want to
> know about objects) is that the above is a valid test that states
> precisely the desired goal with pretty much zero boilerplate.
>
>    

I still don't see the following two lines as 'boilerplate'... :-)

import unittest
class SomeTest(unittest.TestCase):
...

> If I have to tell scientists that before writing a test they have to
> subclass some special contraption from unittest, and know about self,
> etc, I'd have to postpone testing until classes have  been somewhat
> introduced.   But the above approach lets me put tests in pretty much
> from day 1, which is good.
>    

That I can understand. I don't think there is really much of a solution 
(except perhaps the solutions you already have...) as unittest is pretty 
'object-oriented' in its approach.

All the best,

Michael Foord

> Cheers,
>
> f
>    


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