Python, unit test - Pass command line arguments to setUp of unittest.TestCase

Question

I have a script that acts as a wrapper for some unit tests written using the Python unittest module. In addition to cleaning up some files, creating an output s

Answer 1

If you define the attributes in the init method, then you can simply pass them all in the constructor like this..

import unittest
import helpspot

class TestHelpSpot(unittest.TestCase):
    "A few simple tests for HelpSpot"

    def __init__(self, testname, path, user, pword):
        super(TestHelpSpot, self).__init__(testname)
        self.path = path
        self.user = user
        self.pword = pword
....
....
....


if __name__ == '__main__':
    True

    suite = unittest.TestSuite()
    suite.addTest(TestHelpSpot("test_version", path, user, pword))    

    unittest.TextTestRunner().run(suite)

Answer 2

I would definitely advise against passing arguments to setUp like this; setUp is intended to be called implicitly when running a test, so you shouldn't be explicitly calling it like this.

One way you could tackle this would be to set the values you need to set either as environment variables or values in a globally accessible "context" module, which would allow test cases to access them as needed. I would go for using environment variables, as it is more flexible in terms of running the tests (you're then no longer relying on command line arguments).

Answer 3

Well, I want to do the same thing and was going to ask this question myself. I wanted to improve over the following code because it has duplication. It does let me send in arguments to test TestCase however:

import unittest
import helpspot

class TestHelpSpot(unittest.TestCase):
    "A few simple tests for HelpSpot"

    def __init__(self, testname, path, user, pword):
        super(TestHelpSpot, self).__init__(testname)
        self.hs = helpspot.HelpSpot(path, user, pword)

    def test_version(self):
        a = self.hs.version()
        b = self.hs.private_version()
        self.assertEqual(a, b)

    def test_get_with_param(self):
        a = self.hs.filter_get(xFilter=1)

    def test_unknown_method(self):
        self.assertRaises(helpspot.HelpSpotError, self.hs.private_wuggienorple)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys
    user = sys.argv[1]
    pword = sys.argv[2]
    path = sys.argv[3]

    test_loader = unittest.TestLoader()
    test_names = test_loader.getTestCaseNames(TestHelpSpot)

    suite = unittest.TestSuite()
    for test_name in test_names:
        suite.addTest(TestHelpSpot(test_name, path, user, pword))

    result = unittest.TextTestRunner().run(suite)
    sys.exit(not result.wasSuccessful())

Answer 4

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from optparse import OptionParser
    parser = OptionParser()
    parser.add_option("-z", "--zebra",
                      action="store_true", dest="zebra", default=False,
                      help="run like a zebra")    


    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()

    if options.zebra:
        zebrafy()


    # remove our args because we don't want to send them to unittest
    for x in sum([h._long_opts+h._short_opts for h in parser.option_list],[]):
        if x in sys.argv:
            sys.argv.remove(x)


    unittest.main()