Testing Lesson

[PythonCHB]

A note or two about the testing lesson:

Joe put together a really nice lesson testing. However, he introduced it right from the beginning. But we actually do a lot of testing in the first course.

Perhaps we don't do as good a job as we should, and a review of the basics is always good, but hopefully there will be time in course to to get into the advanced topics:

fixtures, parameterized testing, mocking, etc.

At one point, I had the students mock the input() function so they could fully test mailroom.

Also -- I, at least, really dislike unitttest. It's good to introduce it, as Python developers will see it, but I hope we won't teach it as the be-all and end-all of testing in Python. That is, show folks how to do fixtures, mocking, etc with pytest as well.

have at it!

-Chris

Great suggestions. I prefer pytest and I believe Luis is going to use that. We intend to bring testing in at the start and encourage the students to use it throughout

heads up for @ldconejo

[PythonCHB]

BTW -- yes, a great idea to start off the course with a testing push :-)

I've generally fond that only a fraction of the class "gets" testing in the first class.

[ldconejo]

I'm ok with both, but Pytest is definitely a good choice. If we're going in that direction, I'll need to do a slightly bigger update to the assignment for unit / integration testing, but it should be fine :-)

-Luis

I would say if we can accommodate pytest lets do so but dont take on a lot of extra work Luis! We'll leave it if it means you have to take a lot more on board. Please comment: and THANKS

[PythonCHB]

I'll need to do a slightly bigger update to the assignment for unit / integration testing,

It may not take much to change the assignment -- we give the students the option of using unittest or pytest features. I haven't looked recently at the information we point them too, but that's where the work would be :-)

There may be some useful stuff here:

https://github.com/UWPCE-PythonCert/PythonCertDevel/blob/master/source/modules/Testing_advanced.rst

[PythonCHB]

Ping!

I just took another quick look at the testing lesson, and a couple other comments:

A lot of use of @staticmethod, for pretty much no good reason. Most people think using @staticmethod just so you can put a bunch of functions in a class is not "Pythonic".

Not addressing parametrized testing at all -- which I think is partially due to unittest not having it built in :-) -- a good reason to like pytest.

fixtures are a key feature!

If you are going to teach unittest, a good idea to talk about the other other assert methods available, and why you might want to use them.

Comparing floating point numbers is worth mentioning. There is math.isclose() and assertAlmostEqual.

Some more info on "good tests" -- things like keeping them isolated, etc.

A lot of this is covered in the Testing_advanced page referenced above -- maybe link to that?

Passing on to Luis who is working on this fyi

…

--- akmiles@icloud.com Andy Miles @pythonsavvy

On Dec 8, 2018, 2:18 PM -0800, Christopher H.Barker, PhD ***@***.***>, wrote: Ping! I just took another quick look at the testing lesson, and a couple other comments: A lot of use of @staticmethod, for pretty much no good reason. Most people think using @staticmethod just so you can put a bunch of functions in a class is not "Pythonic". Not addressing parametrized testing at all -- which I think is partially due to unittest not having it built in :-) -- a good reason to like pytest. fixtures are a key feature! If you are going to teach unittest, a good idea to talk about the other other assert methods available, and why you might want to use them. Comparing floating point numbers is worth mentioning. There is math.isclose() and assertAlmostEqual. Some more info on "good tests" -- things like keeping them isolated, etc. A lot of this is covered in the Testing_advanced page referenced above -- maybe link to that? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[PythonCHB]

Oh, and there is this, if you want to make use of it:

https://uwpce-pythoncert.github.io/PythonCertDevel/exercises/mailroom-mock.html