Can't catch mocked exception because it doesn't inherit BaseException

Question

I'm working on a project that involves connecting to a remote server, waiting for a response, and then performing actions based on that response. We catch a couple of different exceptions, and behave differently depending on which exception is caught. For example:

def myMethod(address, timeout=20):
    try:
        response = requests.head(address, timeout=timeout)
    except requests.exceptions.Timeout:
        # do something special
    except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:
        # do something special
    except requests.exceptions.HTTPError:
        # do something special
    else:
        if response.status_code != requests.codes.ok:
            # do something special
        return successfulConnection.SUCCESS

To test this, we've written a test like the following

class TestMyMethod(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_good_connection(self):
        config = {
            'head.return_value': type('MockResponse', (), {'status_code': requests.codes.ok}),
            'codes.ok': requests.codes.ok
        }
        with mock.patch('path.to.my.package.requests', **config):
            self.assertEqual(
                mypackage.myMethod('some_address',
                mypackage.successfulConnection.SUCCESS
            )

    def test_bad_connection(self):
        config = {
            'head.side_effect': requests.exceptions.ConnectionError,
            'requests.exceptions.ConnectionError': requests.exceptions.ConnectionError
        }
        with mock.patch('path.to.my.package.requests', **config):
            self.assertEqual(
                mypackage.myMethod('some_address',
                mypackage.successfulConnection.FAILURE
            )

If I run the function directly, everything happens as expected. I even tested by adding raise requests.exceptions.ConnectionError to the try clause of the function. But when I run my unit tests, I get

ERROR: test_bad_connection (test.test_file.TestMyMethod)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "path/to/sourcefile", line ###, in myMethod
    respone = requests.head(address, timeout=timeout)
  File "path/to/unittest/mock", line 846, in __call__
    return _mock_self.mock_call(*args, **kwargs)
  File "path/to/unittest/mock", line 901, in _mock_call
    raise effect
my.package.requests.exceptions.ConnectionError

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "Path/to/my/test", line ##, in test_bad_connection
    mypackage.myMethod('some_address',
  File "Path/to/package", line ##, in myMethod
    except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:
TypeError: catching classes that do not inherit from BaseException is not allowed

I tried to change the exception I was patching in to BaseException and I got a more or less identical error.

I've read https://stackoverflow.com/a/18163759/3076272 already, so I think it must be a bad __del__ hook somewhere, but I'm not sure where to look for it or what I can even do in the mean time. I'm also relatively new to unittest.mock.patch() so it's very possible that I'm doing something wrong there as well.

This is a Fusion360 add-in so it is using Fusion 360's packaged version of Python 3.3 - as far as I know it's a vanilla version (i.e. they don't roll their own) but I'm not positive of that.

Answer 1

I could reproduce the error with a minimal example:

foo.py:

class MyError(Exception):
    pass

class A:
    def inner(self):
        err = MyError("FOO")
        print(type(err))
        raise err
    def outer(self):
        try:
            self.inner()
        except MyError as err:
            print ("catched ", err)
        return "OK"

Test without mocking :

class FooTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_inner(self):
        a = foo.A()
        self.assertRaises(foo.MyError, a.inner)
    def test_outer(self):
        a = foo.A()
        self.assertEquals("OK", a.outer())

Ok, all is fine, both test pass

The problem comes with the mocks. As soon as the class MyError is mocked, the expect clause cannot catch anything and I get same error as the example from the question :

class FooTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_inner(self):
        a = foo.A()
        self.assertRaises(foo.MyError, a.inner)
    def test_outer(self):
        with unittest.mock.patch('foo.MyError'):
            a = exc2.A()
            self.assertEquals("OK", a.outer())

Immediately gives :

ERROR: test_outer (__main__.FooTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "...\foo.py", line 11, in outer
    self.inner()
  File "...\foo.py", line 8, in inner
    raise err
TypeError: exceptions must derive from BaseException

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#78>", line 8, in test_outer
  File "...\foo.py", line 12, in outer
    except MyError as err:
TypeError: catching classes that do not inherit from BaseException is not allowed

Here I get a first TypeErrorthat you did not have, because I am raising a mock while you forced a true exception with 'requests.exceptions.ConnectionError': requests.exceptions.ConnectionError in config. But the problem remains that the except clause tries to catch a mock.

TL/DR: as you mock the full requests package, the except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError clause tries to catch a mock. As the mock is not really a BaseException, it causes the error.

The only solution I can imagine is not to mock the full requests but only the parts that are not exceptions. I must admit I could not find how to say to mock mock everything except this but in your example, you only need to patch requests.head. So I think that this should work :

def test_bad_connection(self):
    with mock.patch('path.to.my.package.requests.head',
                    side_effect=requests.exceptions.ConnectionError):
        self.assertEqual(
            mypackage.myMethod('some_address',
            mypackage.successfulConnection.FAILURE
        )

That is : only patch the head method with the exception as side effect.