Mock entire python class
First it is very important to understand that you always need to Mock where it the thing you are trying to mock out is used as stated in the unittest.mock
documentation.
The basic principle is that you patch where an object is looked up, which is not necessarily the same place as where it is defined.
Next what you would need to do is to return a MagicMock
instance as return_value
of the patched object. So to summarize this you would need to use the following sequence.
- Patch Object
- prepare
MagicMock
to be used - return the
MagicMock
we've just created asreturn_value
Here a quick example of a project.
connection.py (Class we would like to Mock)
class Connection(object):
def execute(self):
return "Connection to server made"
file.py (Where the Class is used)
from project.connection import Connection
class FileRemoveOp(object):
def __init__(self, foo):
self.foo = foo
def execute(self):
conn = Connection()
result = conn.execute()
return result
tests/test_file.py
import unittest
from unittest.mock import patch, MagicMock
from project.file import FileRemoveOp
class TestFileRemoveOp(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.fileremoveop = FileRemoveOp('foobar')
@patch('project.file.Connection')
def test_execute(self, connection_mock):
# Create a new MagickMock instance which will be the
# `return_value` of our patched object
connection_instance = MagicMock()
connection_instance.execute.return_value = "testing"
# Return the above created `connection_instance`
connection_mock.return_value = connection_instance
result = self.fileremoveop.execute()
expected = "testing"
self.assertEqual(result, expected)
def test_not_mocked(self):
# No mocking involved will execute the `Connection.execute` method
result = self.fileremoveop.execute()
expected = "Connection to server made"
self.assertEqual(result, expected)