[TIP] Sclara is a Python testing DSL

[Staple, Danny (BSKYB)]

Hmm - I am thinking that a python dsl similar to JS's Jasmine with matchers would be doable.

with describe("foo"):
  It("should throw bar"):
    expect( lambda : foo.doStuff()).toRaise(BarException);

There definitely are many python test things other than doctest and unittest (Freshen, Lettuce, PySpec, spec plugin for nose, should-dsl for some). The trick to acceptance is compatibility probably, make sure that there is a nose plugin, that it works with Micheal Foord's mock, that doesn't do such strange magic that it taints the global namespace and makes stuff behave incorrectly.

From: testing-in-python-bounces at lists.idyll.org [mailto:testing-in-python-bounces at lists.idyll.org] On Behalf Of Alfredo Deza
Sent: 26 March 2012 12:08
To: Chris.Wesseling at cwi.nl
Cc: John MacKenzie; testing-in-python at lists.idyll.org
Subject: Re: [TIP] Sclara is a Python testing DSL


On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:56 AM, <Chris.Wesseling at cwi.nl<mailto:Chris.Wesseling at cwi.nl>> wrote:
On 2012-03-24T16:00:06-0500, John MacKenzie wrote:
> http://github.com/198d/sclara
[...]
> There are failures in both as a demonstration of how this interacts with a
> TestRunner. The first one proves mainly that this is just Python; if you
> use one of the provided runners you can execute your test files with the
> Python interpreter (a big goal after looking at a tool like komira for this
> sort of thing). The latter demonstrates that a nose plugin is possible and
> probably implies that a py.test plugin is doable to.
Could you point me to "komira"? Your e-mail turns up as the only
relevant hit using my search-fu.

Konira is a Testing DSL framework [0] that I started working on about a year and a half ago. It
is not valid Python (hence the DSL connotation) but it is translated to it when tests are run
via de included Test Runner or with the py.test [1] plugin for it.

The problem that I see these solutions (including Konira) bring to the table is that they all try to
create a flexible, descriptive and terse domain for writing tests, and while some of them have a
significant gain over current testing standards, they fail when the complexity goes beyond
asserting something that has a nice description.

It might be heretic to raise this in a testing list for Python, but I also believe that the Python community
is not as pro-innovation in the testing environment as other communities are, which is detrimental to the fact
that there are a few people who don't like the standard testing framework and are looking forwards to an
alternative.




> Beyond sclara, I'm considering the idea that, more than a testing
> framework, I stumbled on an interesting pattern for building generic DSLs
> in Python (more on this soon, hopefully).
>
> Thoughts?
I started reading the tests, to see if the DSL provides the clarity we need in
this domain:

examples/test_sclara.py line 14:

   with test('does not have access to inner setup context') as context:
       try:
           context.bar
       except AttributeError:
           pass


Will this fail if no AttributeError is thrown?

And line 45:

   with test('has access to inner setup context') as context:
       assert context.foo == 'bar'

   with test('has access to outer setup context') as context:
       assert context.bar == 'foo'

Shouldn't "inner" and "outer" be swapped here?
The outer setup adds foo and baz attributes.
The inner setup adds the bar attribute to the context and changes the baz value.


What I see as a pitfall for users with this idiom, is that it might invite to
breaking isolation.

Interesting, though.

[0] http://konira.cafepais.com/docs/index.html
[1] http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytest-konira

--
Chris Wesseling
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
https://www.cwi.nl/people/ccw

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