Batch tests (unittest) in Python

Question

I have a unittest that tests the connection of an url. Individually it works, but I have several urls to test, so I'm trying to call this test module and batch-test them! But I get errors in calling the test function. Could you help me?

test.py:

class TestConnector(unittest.TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        [...]

    def test_connection(self, url):
        conn = Connector(self.user)
        self.assertNotEqual(conn.read(url), None)

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

Now I want to test several urls, so I created file with them, and try to call the test function:

import test

with open('URL_list.txt') as f:
    urls = f.readlines()

suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromModule(test.TestConnector)

for url in urls:
    unittest.TextTestRunner().run(suite)

And I get this message as many times as urls I have:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 0 tests in 0.000s

OK

----------------------------------------------------------------------

What's wrong?

Answer 1

Your test method is ignored because it takes an argument. Test methods never take an argument. This is quite beside the fact that Python won't ever magically pass a local variable name into a function as an argument; you'd have to explicitly pass it in.

Integrate your url loading into the test itself instead:

class TestConnector(unittest.TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        [...]

    def test_connections(self):

        with open('URL_list.txt') as f:
            for url in f:
                conn = Connector(self.user)
                self.assertNotEqual(conn.read(url.strip()), None)

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

or create test methods dynamically:

class TestConnector(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        [...]

def generate_test(url):
    def test(self):
        conn = Connector(self.user)
        self.assertNotEqual(conn.read(url), None)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with open('URL_list.txt') as f:
        for i, url in enumerate(f):
            test_name = 'test_{}'.format(i)
            setattr(TestConnector, test_name, generate_test(url.strip()))

    unittest.main()