Python unit test with base and sub class

Question

I currently have a few unit tests which share a common set of tests. Here\'s an example:

import unittest

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):

    def testCo         


        

Answer 1

You can solve this problem with a single command:

del(BaseTest)

So the code would look like this:

import unittest

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):

    def testCommon(self):
        print 'Calling BaseTest:testCommon'
        value = 5
        self.assertEquals(value, 5)

class SubTest1(BaseTest):

    def testSub1(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest1:testSub1'
        sub = 3
        self.assertEquals(sub, 3)


class SubTest2(BaseTest):

    def testSub2(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest2:testSub2'
        sub = 4
        self.assertEquals(sub, 4)

del(BaseTest)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Answer 2

I made about the same than @Vladim P. (https://stackoverflow.com/a/25695512/2451329) but slightly modified:

import unittest2


from some_module import func1, func2


def make_base_class(func):

    class Base(unittest2.TestCase):

        def test_common1(self):
            print("in test_common1")
            self.assertTrue(func())

        def test_common2(self):
            print("in test_common1")
            self.assertFalse(func(42))

    return Base



class A(make_base_class(func1)):
    pass


class B(make_base_class(func2)):

    def test_func2_with_no_arg_return_bar(self):
        self.assertEqual("bar", func2())

and there we go.

Answer 3

Change the BaseTest method name to setUp:

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        print 'Calling BaseTest:testCommon'
        value = 5
        self.assertEquals(value, 5)


class SubTest1(BaseTest):
    def testSub1(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest1:testSub1'
        sub = 3
        self.assertEquals(sub, 3)


class SubTest2(BaseTest):
    def testSub2(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest2:testSub2'
        sub = 4
        self.assertEquals(sub, 4)

Output:

Ran 2 tests in 0.000s

Calling BaseTest:testCommon Calling
SubTest1:testSub1 Calling
BaseTest:testCommon Calling
SubTest2:testSub2

From the documentation:

TestCase.setUp()
Method called to prepare the test fixture. This is called immediately before calling the test method; any exception raised by this method will be considered an error rather than a test failure. The default implementation does nothing.

Answer 4

Here is a solution that uses only documented unittest features an that avoids having a "skip" status in your test results:

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):

    def __init__(self, methodName='runTest'):
        if self.__class__ is BaseTest:
            # don't run these tests in the abstract base implementation
            methodName = 'runNoTestsInBaseClass'
        super().__init__(methodName)

    def runNoTestsInBaseClass(self):
        pass

    def testCommon(self):
        # everything else as in the original question

How it works: per the unittest.TestCase documentation, "Each instance of TestCase will run a single base method: the method named methodName." The default "runTests" runs all the test* methods on the class—that's how TestCase instances normally work. But when running in the abstract base class itself, you can simply override that behavior with a method that does nothing.

A side effect is your test count will increase by one: the runNoTestsInBaseClass "test" gets counted as a successful test when it's run on BaseClass.

(This also works in Python 2.7, if you're still on that. Just change super() to super(BaseTest, self).)

Answer 5

Use multiple inheritance, so your class with common tests doesn't itself inherit from TestCase.

import unittest

class CommonTests(object):
    def testCommon(self):
        print 'Calling BaseTest:testCommon'
        value = 5
        self.assertEquals(value, 5)

class SubTest1(unittest.TestCase, CommonTests):

    def testSub1(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest1:testSub1'
        sub = 3
        self.assertEquals(sub, 3)


class SubTest2(unittest.TestCase, CommonTests):

    def testSub2(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest2:testSub2'
        sub = 4
        self.assertEquals(sub, 4)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Answer 6

Just rename the testCommon method to something else. Unittest (usually) skips anything that doesn't have 'test' in it.

Quick and simple

  import unittest

  class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):

   def methodCommon(self):
       print 'Calling BaseTest:testCommon'
       value = 5
       self.assertEquals(value, 5)

  class SubTest1(BaseTest):

      def testSub1(self):
          print 'Calling SubTest1:testSub1'
          sub = 3
          self.assertEquals(sub, 3)


  class SubTest2(BaseTest):

      def testSub2(self):
          print 'Calling SubTest2:testSub2'
          sub = 4
          self.assertEquals(sub, 4)

  if __name__ == '__main__':
      unittest.main()`