Unittest tests order

Question

How do I be sure of the unittest methods order? Is the alphabetical or numeric prefixes the proper way?

class TestFoo(TestCase):
    def test_1(self):
               


        

Answer 1

You can disable it by setting sortTestMethodsUsing to None: http://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html#unittest.TestLoader.sortTestMethodsUsing

import unittest
unittest.TestLoader.sortTestMethodsUsing = None

For pure unittests, you folks are right; but for component tests and integration tests... I do not agree that you shall assume nothing about the state. What if you are testing the state. For example, your test validates that a service is auto-started upon installation. If in your setup, you start the service, then do the assertion, then you are no longer testing the state but you are testing the "service start" functionality.

Another example is when your setup takes a long time or requires a lot of space and it just becomes impractical to run the setup frequently.

Many developers tend to use "unittest" frameworks for component testing...so stop and ask yourself, am I doing unittesting or component testing.