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

I half agree with the idea that tests souldn't be ordered. In some cases it helps (it's easier damn it!) to have them in order... after all that's the reason for the 'unit' in UnitTest.

That said one alternative is to use mock objects to mockout and patch the items that should run before that specific code under test. You can also put a dummy function in there to monkey patch your code. For more info check out Mock, which is part of the standard library now. Mock

Here are some YouTube videos if you haven't used Mock before.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

More to the point, try using class methods to structure your code, then place all the class methods in one main test method.

import unittest
import sqlite3

class MyOrderedTest(unittest.TestCase):

    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls.create_db()
        cls.setup_draft()
        cls.draft_one()
        cls.draft_two()
        cls.draft_three()

    @classmethod
    def create_db(cls):
        cls.conn = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")

    @classmethod
    def setup_draft(cls):
        cls.conn.execute("CREATE TABLE players ('draftid' INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL, 'first', 'last')")

    @classmethod
    def draft_one(cls):
        player = ("Hakeem", "Olajuwon")
        cls.conn.execute("INSERT INTO players (first, last) VALUES (?, ?)", player)

    @classmethod
    def draft_two(cls):
        player = ("Sam", "Bowie")
        cls.conn.execute("INSERT INTO players (first, last) VALUES (?, ?)", player)

    @classmethod
    def draft_three(cls):
        player = ("Michael", "Jordan")
        cls.conn.execute("INSERT INTO players (first, last) VALUES (?, ?)", player)

    def test_unordered_one(self):
        cur = self.conn.execute("SELECT * from players")
        draft = [(1, u'Hakeem', u'Olajuwon'), (2, u'Sam', u'Bowie'), (3, u'Michael', u'Jordan')]
        query = cur.fetchall()
        print query
        self.assertListEqual(query, draft)

    def test_unordered_two(self):
        cur = self.conn.execute("SELECT first, last FROM players WHERE draftid=3")
        result = cur.fetchone()
        third = " ".join(result)
        print third
        self.assertEqual(third, "Michael Jordan")