question about an exciting gotcha for unittests (and elsewhere) ...

[Cameron Simpson]

On 23Apr2010 16:15, I wrote:
| On 23Apr2010 15:37, I wrote:
| |   class Backend(object):
| |     def serialise(self, value):
| |       ''' Convert a value for external string storage.
| |       '''
| |       if isinstance(value, Node): [...]
| |         return ":%s:%s" % (value.type, value.name)
| |       t = type(value)
| |       assert t in (str,int), repr(t)+" "+repr(value)+" "+repr(Node)
| |       [...]
| [...]
| |   AssertionError: <class '__main__.Node'> HOST:foo:{} <class 'cs.nodedb.node.Node'>
| | 
| | Experienced users will see at once what's happened: I've made a Node
| | myself in the test using the local class, and the Node class is thus
| | __main__.Node. However, my sql Backend class has independently imported
| | the "Node" and "Backend" classes from "cs.nodedb.node". So when _it_
| | calls serialise(), "Node" is "cs.nodedb.node.Node".
| [...]
| 
| A walk around the block and I'm thinking the olny sane way to do this is
| to use relative imports, to always get the sqla.py module from the same
| place as the node.py where the test lives, and likewise in sqla.py
| to relatively import node.py to get its matching file.
| 
| And then to explicitly import from "node" etc in the test to get the
| right names.
| 
| However, that means the unit test knows its own filename/module-name.

Further down this path I've done the following:

  node.py's unittest now doesn't use the sqla module at all, and passes its
    self tests with a no-op Backend

  sqla.py's unittest subclasses node.py's unittest and replaces the setUp()
    with one that uses a Backend_SQLAlchemy object

  the imports at the top of sqla.py now read:
    from . import NodeDB, Backend
    from .node import TestAll as NodeTestAll
  to remove special knowledge of the package name

  I was invoking the self test like this:
    DEBUG=1 dev python2.6 ./lib/cs/nodedb/sqla.py
  which breaks relative imports. Now I do this:
    DEBUG=1 dev python2.6 -m cs.nodedb.sqla
  and it is all good. ("dev" is a wrapper to set PYTHONPATH
  to use my work area, etc).

Since I've convinced myself that my previous practices were inherently
instantiating node.py twice with different names, I guess I can say my
problem is solved, for some definition of the term:-)

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, it is evident that every
program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work.
        - Ken Arnold