I'm writing tests for a function like next one:
def foo():
print 'hello world!'
So when I want to test this function the code will be like this:
import sys
from foomodule import foo
def test_foo():
foo()
output = sys.stdout.getline().strip() # because stdout is an StringIO instance
assert output == 'hello world!'
But if I run nosetests with -s parameter the test crashes. How can I catch the output with unittest or nose module?
I use this context manager to capture output. It ultimately uses the same technique as some of the other answers by temporarily replacing sys.stdout
. I prefer the context manager because it wraps all the bookkeeping into a single function, so I don't have to re-write any try-finally code, and I don't have to write setup and teardown functions just for this.
import sys
from contextlib import contextmanager
from StringIO import StringIO
@contextmanager
def captured_output():
new_out, new_err = StringIO(), StringIO()
old_out, old_err = sys.stdout, sys.stderr
try:
sys.stdout, sys.stderr = new_out, new_err
yield sys.stdout, sys.stderr
finally:
sys.stdout, sys.stderr = old_out, old_err
Use it like this:
with captured_output() as (out, err):
foo()
# This can go inside or outside the `with` block
output = out.getvalue().strip()
self.assertEqual(output, 'hello world!')
Furthermore, since the original output state is restored upon exiting the with
block, we can set up a second capture block in the same function as the first one, which isn't possible using setup and teardown functions, and gets wordy when writing try-finally blocks manually. That ability came in handy when the goal of a test was to compare the results of two functions relative to each other rather than to some precomputed value.