[TIP] Unit testing functions which call super

[Marcin Tustin]

I guess you’re not a django user – that would cut against the grain of the design of class based views. Inheritance IS the composition mechanism, and it works well, but it leads to this particular challenge with testing. In fact, I’m very satisfied with mocking super as a solution; it will only be in a minority of cases that anything more sophisticated is required.

From: testing-in-python-bounces at lists.idyll.org [mailto:testing-in-python-bounces at lists.idyll.org] On Behalf Of Harry Percival
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2014 8:51 AM
Cc: testing-in-python at lists.idyll.org
Subject: Re: [TIP] Unit testing functions which call super

Any mileage in doing the "prefer composition over inheritance" thing?

On 14 August 2014 13:31, Marcin Tustin <Marcin.Tustin at dealertrack.com<mailto:Marcin.Tustin at dealertrack.com>> wrote:
I can’t share real code, but what I can tell you is that it’s django code – we’ve got a lot multiple inheritance going on with class based views. None of these methods are going to stop having super calls (or if they do, that will very much be the exception).

As to behaviour-driven testing: I usually use that, and minimize mocks. With class based views, each class implements a different behaviour, and the inheritance hierarchy is fairly deep (at least three classes). Accordingly, each method really does need to be tested independently, because it is not that the method uses super to implement one behaviour; rather it is triggering the next behaviour, whatever that may be.

From: David Stanek [mailto:dstanek at dstanek.com<mailto:dstanek at dstanek.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:13 PM
To: Marcin Tustin
Cc: Ned Batchelder; testing-in-python at lists.idyll.org<mailto:testing-in-python at lists.idyll.org>

Subject: Re: [TIP] Unit testing functions which call super


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Marcin Tustin <Marcin.Tustin at dealertrack.com<mailto:Marcin.Tustin at dealertrack.com>> wrote:
It’s not  question of terminology. What happens if I let the test call it’s super is impossible to anticipate (but in practice will be some kind of exception). Even if it successfully calls the super methods, the output won’t be defined by this code, but some other code, so I can’t usefully test anything about it other than its type. If it doesn’t work, then I have to deal with those exceptions, but then I can’t very well distinguish between exceptions originating in the code I’m testing, and exceptions in the super methods. It’s all the usual reasons for mocking out calls.


I think about my tests differently. I don't care how the feature is implemented all I care about is if it works. Mocking super means that you can't refactor your code without changing tests.

Do you have any real code to share?  I suspect that the method you had in your original post isn't real production code.  But if I just look at that example the only thing I would mock is `do_some_stuff` because it's a collaborator.

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David
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www: http://dstanek.com

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Harry J.W. Percival
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