Summary

We looked at using unittest and doctest to create automated unit tests. We also looked at creating a test suite so that collections of tests can be packaged for reuse and aggregation into suites with larger scopes, without relying on the automated test discovery process.

We looked at how to create mock objects so that we can test software units in isolation. We also looked at the various kinds of setup and teardown features. These allow us to write tests with complex initial states or persistent results.

The FIRST properties of unit tests fit well with both doctest and unittest. The FIRST properties are as follows:

• Fast: Unless we write egregiously bad tests, the performance of doctest and unitest should be very fast.

• Isolated: The unittest package offers us a mock module that we can use to isolate our class definitions. In addition, we can exercise some care in our design to ensure that our components are isolated from each other.

• Repeatable: Using doctest and unittest for automated...