[Python-Dev] Proposed unittest changes (original) (raw)

Jean-Paul Calderone exarkun at divmod.com
Mon Jul 14 02:58:48 CEST 2008

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:51:44 +0100, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:

Ben Finney wrote:

Howdy Michael,

I'm interested in the changes you're proposing for Python's 'unittest' module. I am (like, I suspect, many Python coders) maintaining my own set of extensions to the module across many projects, so I'd really like to see many of the improvements you discuss actually in the standard library. What assistance can I offer to help on this issue?

I intend to start working on them in August, after I have finished my current writing commitments. The full list of changes proposed (feel free to start - but ping me or the list) and not shot down was something like: Documenting that the assert method names are to be preferred over the 'FailUnless' names (this stirred up some controversy this weekend so should probably not happen). Adding the following new asserts: assertIn (member, container, msg=None) assertNotIn (member, container, msg=None) assertIs (first, second, msg=None) assertNotIs (first, second, msg=None) assertRaisesWithMessage (excclass, message, callable, *args, **keywargs)

Several of these are implemented in other libraries (Twisted, at least). You might save some time by grabbing them and their unit tests, rather than re-implementing them. Twisted calls assertIs´ assertIdentical´, by the way.

[snip]

Other suggestions that weren't controversial but I might not get to: assertRaisesWithMessage taking a regex to match the error message

Actually, I remember that someone raised an object to this as being not as flexible as some might want - an objection I agree with. Perhaps that was overruled, but I didn't want this to slip by as "not controversial".

expect methods that collect failures and report at the end of the test (allowing an individual test method to raise several errors without stopping)

assertIsInstance and assertIsSubclass

The former of these is also in Twisted already, if you want to copy it.

Jean-Paul

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