How to test Python 3.4 asyncio code?

Question

What's the best way to write unit tests for code using the Python 3.4 asyncio library? Assume I want to test a TCP client (SocketConnection):

import asyncio
import unittest

class TestSocketConnection(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.mock_server = MockServer("localhost", 1337)
        self.socket_connection = SocketConnection("localhost", 1337)

    @asyncio.coroutine
    def test_sends_handshake_after_connect(self):
        yield from self.socket_connection.connect()
        self.assertTrue(self.mock_server.received_handshake())

When running this test case with the default test runner, the test will always succeed as the method executes only up until the first yield from instruction, after which it returns before executing any assertions. This causes tests to always succeed.

Is there a prebuilt test runner that is able to handle asynchronous code like this?

Answer 1

I temporarily solved the problem using a decorator inspired by Tornado's gen_test:

def async_test(f):
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        coro = asyncio.coroutine(f)
        future = coro(*args, **kwargs)
        loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
        loop.run_until_complete(future)
    return wrapper

Like J.F. Sebastian suggested, this decorator will block until the test method coroutine has finished. This allows me to write test cases like this:

class TestSocketConnection(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.mock_server = MockServer("localhost", 1337)
        self.socket_connection = SocketConnection("localhost", 1337)

    @async_test
    def test_sends_handshake_after_connect(self):
        yield from self.socket_connection.connect()
        self.assertTrue(self.mock_server.received_handshake())

This solution probably misses some edge cases.

I think a facility like this should added to Python's standard library to make asyncio and unittest interaction more convenient out of the box.