How can one mock/stub python module like urllib

Question

I need to test a function that needs to query a page on an external server using urllib.urlopen (it also uses urllib.urlencode). The server could be down, the page could cha

Answer 1

In case you don't want to even load the module:

import sys,types
class MockCallable():
  """ Mocks a function, can be enquired on how many calls it received """
  def __init__(self, result):
    self.result  = result
    self._calls  = []

  def __call__(self, *arguments):
    """Mock callable"""
    self._calls.append(arguments)
    return self.result

  def called(self):
    """docstring for called"""
    return self._calls

class StubModule(types.ModuleType, object):
  """ Uses a stub instead of loading libraries """

  def __init__(self, moduleName):
    self.__name__ = moduleName
    sys.modules[moduleName] = self

  def __repr__(self):
    name  = self.__name__
    mocks = ', '.join(set(dir(self)) - set(['__name__']))
    return "" % locals()

class StubObject(object):
  pass

And then:

>>> urllib = StubModule("urllib")
>>> import urllib # won't actually load urllib

>>> urls.urlopen = MockCallable(StubObject())

>>> example = urllib.urlopen('http://example.com')
>>> example.read = MockCallable('foo')

>>> print(example.read())
'foo'