I am working on a series of unit tests in Python, some of which depend on the value of a configuration variable. These variables are stored in a global Python config file and are used in other modules. I would like to write unit tests for different values of the configuration variables but have not yet found a way to do this.
I do not have the possibility to rewrite the signatures of the methods I'm testing.
This is what I would like to achieve:
from my_module import my_function_with_global_var
class TestSomething(self.unittest):
def test_first_case(self):
from config import MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE
MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE = True
self.assertEqual(my_function_with_global_var(), "First result")
def test_second_case(self):
from config import MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE
MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE = False
self.assertEqual(my_function_with_global_var(), "Second result")
Thanks.
Edit: Made the example code more explicite.
You probably want to mock those global variables instead. The advantage of this is that the globals get reset once you're done. Python ships with a mocking module that lets you do this.
unittest.mock.patch
be used as a decorator:
class TestSomething(self.unittest):
@patch('config.MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE', True)
def test_first_case(self):
self.assertEqual(my_function_with_global_var(), "First result")
You can also use it as a context manager:
def test_first_case(self):
with patch('config.MY_CONFIG_VARIABLE', True):
self.assertEqual(my_function_with_global_var(), "First result")