How to test or call a method that takes parsed argparse as parameter?

Question

I have a method that takes argparse as a parameter.

def some_method (self, options):
   if options.something == True:
       #do this

Is there a way to call this method directly without making argparse?

at the moment, I have to make argparse before I call it.

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='something')
parser.add_argument('-s', '--something', dest='something')
options = parser.parse_args()
options.something = True
x.some_method(options)

Answer 1

If you can modify the method, you can do this (though the layers of ifs aren't beautiful):

def some_method (self, options):
   if isinstance(options, bool):
       if options:
           #do this
   # you don't need to compare True to True, since it should be a boolean
   if options.something:
       #do this

Alternatively, you can do this:

class options:
    something = true

x.some_method(options)

I'm sure there are other ways, but those are the first two solutions I can think of.

Answer 2

You can use the mock library, with which you can write tests like this:

from mock import Mock

options = Mock()
options.something = True
# Add initialization of other attributes used in your test case here

x.some_method(options)

# make assertions

We are actually doing duck typing here, we don't have to prepare a parsed argument object, instead we use a mock object that behaves the same way in this situation.

What's more, the behavior of this mock object can be easily modified to test different cases.