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Quick and dirty mock testing with mock_calls

Quick and dirty mock testing with mock_calls#

I needed to write a test that checked for a really complex sequence of mock calls for s3-credentials#3.

I ended up using the following trick, using pytest-mock:

def test_create(mocker):
boto3 = mocker.patch("boto3.client")
runner = CliRunner()
with runner.isolated_filesystem():
result = runner.invoke(cli, ["create", "pytest-bucket-simonw-1", "-c"])
assert [str(c) for c in boto3.mock_calls] == [
"call('s3')",
"call('iam')",
"call().head_bucket(Bucket='pytest-bucket-simonw-1')",
"call().get_user(UserName='s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1')",
'call().put_user_policy(PolicyDocument=\'{"Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [{"Sid": "ListObjectsInBucket", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:ListBucket"], "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::pytest-bucket-simonw-1"]}, {"Sid": "AllObjectActions", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:*Object", "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::pytest-bucket-simonw-1/*"]}]}\', PolicyName=\'s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1\', UserName=\'s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1\')',
"call().create_access_key(UserName='s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1')",
"call().create_access_key().__getitem__('AccessKey')",
"call().create_access_key().__getitem__().__str__()",
]

I used the trick I describe in How to cheat at unit tests with pytest and Black where I run that comparison against an empty [] list, then use pytest --pdb to drop into a debugger and copy and paste the output of [str(c) for c in boto3.mock_calls] into my test code.

Initially I used a comparison directly against boto3.mock_calls - but this threw a surprising error. The calls sequence I baked into my tests looked like this:

from unittest.mock import call
# ...
assert boto3.mock_calls == [
call("s3"),
call("iam"),
call().head_bucket(Bucket="pytest-bucket-simonw-1"),
call().get_user(UserName="s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1"),
call().put_user_policy(
PolicyDocument='{"Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [{"Sid": "ListObjectsInBucket", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": ["s3:ListBucket"], "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::pytest-bucket-simonw-1"]}, {"Sid": "AllObjectActions", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "s3:*Object", "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::pytest-bucket-simonw-1/*"]}]}',
PolicyName="s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1",
UserName="s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1",
),
call().create_access_key(UserName="s3.read-write.pytest-bucket-simonw-1"),
call().create_access_key().__getitem__("AccessKey"),
call().create_access_key().__getitem__().__str__(),
]

But when I ran pytest that last one failed:

E - 'call().create_access_key().__getitem__()',
E ? - ^
E + call().create_access_key().__getitem__().__str__(),
E ? ^^^^^^^^^^

It turns out __str__() calls do not play well with the call() constructor - see this StackOverflow question.

My solution was to cast them all to str() using a list comprehension, which ended up fixing that problem.

Gotcha: parameter ordering#

There’s one major flaw to the str() trick I’m using here: the order in which parameters are displayed in the string representation of call() may differ between Python versions. I had to undo this trick in one place I was using it (see here) as a result due to the following test failure:

E At index 4 diff:
"call().get_user_policy(PolicyName='policy-one', UserName='one')"
!= "call().get_user_policy(UserName='one', PolicyName='policy-one')"
Quick and dirty mock testing with mock_calls
https://mranv.pages.dev/posts/quick-and-dirty-mock-testing-with-mock_calls/
Author
Anubhav Gain
Published at
2024-08-15
License
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0