Mock a MySQL database in Python

Question

I use Python 3.4 from the Anaconda distribution. Within this distribution, I found the pymysql library to connect to an existing MySQL database, which is located on another computer.

import pymysql
config = {
      'user': 'my_user',
      'passwd': 'my_passwd',
      'host': 'my_host',
      'port': my_port
    }

    try:
        cnx = pymysql.connect(**config)
    except pymysql.err.OperationalError : 
        sys.exit("Invalid Input: Wrong username/database or password")

I now want to write test code for my application, in which I want to create a very small database at the setUp of every test case, preferably in memory. However, when I try this out of the blue with pymysql, it cannot make a connection.

def setUp(self):
    config = {
      'user': 'test_user',
      'passwd': 'test_passwd',
      'host': 'localhost'
    }
    cnx = pymysql.connect(**config)

pymysql.err.OperationalError: (2003, "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' ([Errno 61] Connection refused)")

I have been googling around, and found some things about SQLite and MySQLdb. I have the following questions:

1. Is sqlite3 or MySQLdb suitable for creating quickly a database in memory?
2. How do I install MySQLdb within the Anaconda package?
3. Is there an example of a test database, created in the setUp? Is this even a good idea?

I do not have a MySQL server running locally on my computer.

Answer 1

You can mock a mysql db using testing.mysqld (pip install testing.mysqld)

Due to some noisy error logs that crop up, I like this setup when testing:

import testing.mysqld
from sqlalchemy import create_engine

# prevent generating brand new db every time.  Speeds up tests.
MYSQLD_FACTORY = testing.mysqld.MysqldFactory(cache_initialized_db=True, port=7531)


def tearDownModule():
    """Tear down databases after test script has run.
    https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html#setupclass-and-teardownclass
    """
    MYSQLD_FACTORY.clear_cache()


class TestWhatever(unittest.TestCase):

    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls.mysql = MYSQLD_FACTORY()
        cls.db_conn = create_engine(cls.mysql.url()).connect()

    def setUp(self):
        self.mysql.start()
        self.db_conn.execute("""CREATE TABLE `foo` (blah)""")

    def tearDown(self):
        self.db_conn.execute("DROP TABLE foo")

    @classmethod
    def tearDownClass(cls):
        cls.mysql.stop()  # from source code we can see this kills the pid

    def test_something(self):
        # something useful