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<div class="section" id="testtools-tasteful-testing-for-python">
<h1>testtools: tasteful testing for Python<a class="headerlink" href="#testtools-tasteful-testing-for-python" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>testtools is a set of extensions to the Python standard library’s unit testing
framework. These extensions have been derived from many years of experience
with unit testing in Python and come from many different sources. testtools
supports Python versions all the way back to Python 2.6.</p>
<p>What better way to start than with a contrived code snippet?:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>from testtools import TestCase
from testtools.content import Content
from testtools.content_type import UTF8_TEXT
from testtools.matchers import Equals
from myproject import SillySquareServer
class TestSillySquareServer(TestCase):
def setUp(self):
super(TestSillySquare, self).setUp()
self.server = self.useFixture(SillySquareServer())
self.addCleanup(self.attach_log_file)
def attach_log_file(self):
self.addDetail(
'log-file',
Content(UTF8_TEXT
lambda: open(self.server.logfile, 'r').readlines()))
def test_server_is_cool(self):
self.assertThat(self.server.temperature, Equals("cool"))
def test_square(self):
self.assertThat(self.server.silly_square_of(7), Equals(49))</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="why-use-testtools">
<h2>Why use testtools?<a class="headerlink" href="#why-use-testtools" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="better-assertion-methods">
<h3>Better assertion methods<a class="headerlink" href="#better-assertion-methods" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>The standard assertion methods that come with unittest aren’t as helpful as
they could be, and there aren’t quite enough of them. testtools adds
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">assertIn</span></tt>, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">assertIs</span></tt>, <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">assertIsInstance</span></tt> and their negatives.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="matchers-better-than-assertion-methods">
<h3>Matchers: better than assertion methods<a class="headerlink" href="#matchers-better-than-assertion-methods" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Of course, in any serious project you want to be able to have assertions that
are specific to that project and the particular problem that it is addressing.
Rather than forcing you to define your own assertion methods and maintain your
own inheritance hierarchy of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TestCase</span></tt> classes, testtools lets you write
your own “matchers”, custom predicates that can be plugged into a unit test:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">test_response_has_bold</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="c"># The response has bold text.</span>
<span class="n">response</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">server</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">getResponse</span><span class="p">()</span>
<span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">assertThat</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">response</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">HTMLContains</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">Tag</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'bold'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'b'</span><span class="p">)))</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="more-debugging-info-when-you-need-it">
<h3>More debugging info, when you need it<a class="headerlink" href="#more-debugging-info-when-you-need-it" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>testtools makes it easy to add arbitrary data to your test result. If you
want to know what’s in a log file when a test fails, or what the load was on
the computer when a test started, or what files were open, you can add that
information with <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TestCase.addDetail</span></tt>, and it will appear in the test
results if that test fails.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="extend-unittest-but-stay-compatible-and-re-usable">
<h3>Extend unittest, but stay compatible and re-usable<a class="headerlink" href="#extend-unittest-but-stay-compatible-and-re-usable" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>testtools goes to great lengths to allow serious test authors and test
<em>framework</em> authors to do whatever they like with their tests and their
extensions while staying compatible with the standard library’s unittest.</p>
<p>testtools has completely parametrized how exceptions raised in tests are
mapped to <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TestResult</span></tt> methods and how tests are actually executed (ever
wanted <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">tearDown</span></tt> to be called regardless of whether <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">setUp</span></tt> succeeds?)</p>
<p>It also provides many simple but handy utilities, like the ability to clone a
test, a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">MultiTestResult</span></tt> object that lets many result objects get the
results from one test suite, adapters to bring legacy <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">TestResult</span></tt> objects
into our new golden age.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="cross-python-compatibility">
<h3>Cross-Python compatibility<a class="headerlink" href="#cross-python-compatibility" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>testtools gives you the very latest in unit testing technology in a way that
will work with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.1 and 3.2.</p>
<p>If you wish to use testtools with Python 2.4 or 2.5, then please use testtools
0.9.15. Up to then we supported Python 2.4 and 2.5, but we found the
constraints involved in not using the newer language features onerous as we
added more support for versions post Python 3.</p>
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<h3><a href="index.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">testtools: tasteful testing for Python</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#why-use-testtools">Why use testtools?</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#better-assertion-methods">Better assertion methods</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#matchers-better-than-assertion-methods">Matchers: better than assertion methods</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#more-debugging-info-when-you-need-it">More debugging info, when you need it</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#extend-unittest-but-stay-compatible-and-re-usable">Extend unittest, but stay compatible and re-usable</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#cross-python-compatibility">Cross-Python compatibility</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
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</li>
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