Continuing in Python's unittest when an assertion fails

Question

EDIT: switched to a better example, and clarified why this is a real problem.

I\'d like to write unit tests in Python that continue executing when an assertion fails

Answer 1

I liked the approach by @Anthony-Batchelor, to capture the AssertionError exception. But a slight variation to this approach using decorators and also a way to report the tests cases with pass/fail.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import unittest

class UTReporter(object):
    '''
    The UT Report class keeps track of tests cases
    that have been executed.
    '''
    def __init__(self):
        self.testcases = []
        print "init called"

    def add_testcase(self, testcase):
        self.testcases.append(testcase)

    def display_report(self):
        for tc in self.testcases:
            msg = "=============================" + "\n" + \
                "Name: " + tc['name'] + "\n" + \
                "Description: " + str(tc['description']) + "\n" + \
                "Status: " + tc['status'] + "\n"
            print msg

reporter = UTReporter()

def assert_capture(*args, **kwargs):
    '''
    The Decorator defines the override behavior.
    unit test functions decorated with this decorator, will ignore
    the Unittest AssertionError. Instead they will log the test case
    to the UTReporter.
    '''
    def assert_decorator(func):
        def inner(*args, **kwargs):
            tc = {}
            tc['name'] = func.__name__
            tc['description'] = func.__doc__
            try:
                func(*args, **kwargs)
                tc['status'] = 'pass'
            except AssertionError:
                tc['status'] = 'fail'
            reporter.add_testcase(tc)
        return inner
    return assert_decorator



class DecorateUt(unittest.TestCase):

    @assert_capture()
    def test_basic(self):
        x = 5
        self.assertEqual(x, 4)

    @assert_capture()
    def test_basic_2(self):
        x = 4
        self.assertEqual(x, 4)

def main():
    #unittest.main()
    suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromTestCase(DecorateUt)
    unittest.TextTestRunner(verbosity=2).run(suite)

    reporter.display_report()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Output from console:

(awsenv)$ ./decorators.py 
init called
test_basic (__main__.DecorateUt) ... ok
test_basic_2 (__main__.DecorateUt) ... ok

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.000s

OK
=============================
Name: test_basic
Description: None
Status: fail

=============================
Name: test_basic_2
Description: None
Status: pass