mistersql, 30 days ago

What's a good unit test?

• One assertion at at time -- eh, maybe.
• Independent/isolated/controlled <-- mocking's role
• Relevant/Meaningful <--- hard
• Repeatable/deterministic <-- also mocking's role
• Automatic <- CI all the things
• Descriptive <-- long names

mistersql, 30 days ago

Shadows on the wall parable ref! Mocks are the shadows on the wall.

What is I hear, is I should code in a cave.

mistersql, 30 days ago

Good practices

• minimize mocking
• use a library instead of your handrolled
• complex mocking means you should refactor

mistersql, 30 days ago

MagicMock means dict, list, str behavior* is mocked automatically. (Confusing why we would ever not use MagicMock)

• dunder methods

mistersql, 30 days ago

If the mock doesn't work
@patch@mastodon.social("library.thing") then try
@patch@mastodon.social("my_code_where_i_import.library.library.thing")

The other trick is to switch to
import library as lib instead of from library import thing

mistersql, 30 days ago

@patch autospec helps avoid mocking methods that don't exist. I think.

mistersql, 30 days ago

@patch Code for the talk: https://github.com/liz-acosta/testing-strategies-for-python

mistersql, 30 days ago

@patch Audience question: why/when use doctest? Simple scenarios.
Agreed.
Audience question: can you mock self?
me: don't mock yourself, it is bad for self-esteem.
me serious: sounds like how you'd test metaprogramming - I've never seen ordinary tests mock the self

mistersql, 30 days ago

@patch Audience question: Do mocks have use outside of unittesting?
speaker: maybe in an integration testing scenario with some bits mocked, e.g. a webserver with fake parts
me: Finding a mocking library outside of testing code would be astonishing. I'd want to see comments in such code to justify it.

khalidabuhakmeh, 30 days ago

@mistersql @patch https://wiremock.org/