How can I mock requests and the response?

Question

I am trying to use Pythons mock package to mock Pythons requests module. What are the basic calls to get me working in below scenario?

In my views.py, I have a function that makes variety of requests.get() calls with different response each time

def myview(request):
  res1 = requests.get('aurl')
  res2 = request.get('burl')
  res3 = request.get('curl')

In my test class I want to do something like this but cannot figure out exact method calls

Step 1:

# Mock the requests module
# when mockedRequests.get('aurl') is called then return 'a response'
# when mockedRequests.get('burl') is called then return 'b response'
# when mockedRequests.get('curl') is called then return 'c response'

Step 2:

Call my view

Step 3:

verify response contains 'a response', 'b response' , 'c response'

How can I complete Step 1 (mocking the requests module)?

Answer 1

This is how you can do it (you can run this file as-is):

import requests
import unittest
from unittest import mock

# This is the class we want to test
class MyGreatClass:
    def fetch_json(self, url):
        response = requests.get(url)
        return response.json()

# This method will be used by the mock to replace requests.get
def mocked_requests_get(*args, **kwargs):
    class MockResponse:
        def __init__(self, json_data, status_code):
            self.json_data = json_data
            self.status_code = status_code

        def json(self):
            return self.json_data

    if args[0] == 'http://someurl.com/test.json':
        return MockResponse({"key1": "value1"}, 200)
    elif args[0] == 'http://someotherurl.com/anothertest.json':
        return MockResponse({"key2": "value2"}, 200)

    return MockResponse(None, 404)

# Our test case class
class MyGreatClassTestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    # We patch 'requests.get' with our own method. The mock object is passed in to our test case method.
    @mock.patch('requests.get', side_effect=mocked_requests_get)
    def test_fetch(self, mock_get):
        # Assert requests.get calls
        mgc = MyGreatClass()
        json_data = mgc.fetch_json('http://someurl.com/test.json')
        self.assertEqual(json_data, {"key1": "value1"})
        json_data = mgc.fetch_json('http://someotherurl.com/anothertest.json')
        self.assertEqual(json_data, {"key2": "value2"})
        json_data = mgc.fetch_json('http://nonexistenturl.com/cantfindme.json')
        self.assertIsNone(json_data)

        # We can even assert that our mocked method was called with the right parameters
        self.assertIn(mock.call('http://someurl.com/test.json'), mock_get.call_args_list)
        self.assertIn(mock.call('http://someotherurl.com/anothertest.json'), mock_get.call_args_list)

        self.assertEqual(len(mock_get.call_args_list), 3)

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

Important Note: If your MyGreatClass class lives in a different package, say my.great.package, you have to mock my.great.package.requests.get instead of just 'request.get'. In that case your test case would look like this:

import unittest
from unittest import mock
from my.great.package import MyGreatClass

# This method will be used by the mock to replace requests.get
def mocked_requests_get(*args, **kwargs):
    # Same as above


class MyGreatClassTestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    # Now we must patch 'my.great.package.requests.get'
    @mock.patch('my.great.package.requests.get', side_effect=mocked_requests_get)
    def test_fetch(self, mock_get):
        # Same as above

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

Enjoy!