Mocking open(file_name) in unit tests

Question

I have a source code that opens a csv file and sets up a header to value association. The source code is given below:

def ParseCsvFile(source): 
  \"\"\"Pa         


        

Answer 1

There are two ways that I like to do this, depending on the situation.

If your unit test is going to call ParseCsvFile directly I would add a new kwarg to ParseCsvFile:

def ParseCsvFile(source, open=open): 
    # ...
    rack_type_file = open(rack_file)  # Need to mock this line.

Then your unit test can pass a different open_func in order to accomplish the mocking.

If your unit test calls some other function that in turn calls ParseCsvFile then passing around open_func just for tests is ugly. In that case I would use the mock module. This lets you alter a function by name and replace it with a Mock object.

# code.py
def open_func(name):
    return open(name)

def ParseCsvFile(source):
    # ...
    rack_type_file = open_func(rack_file)  # Need to mock this line.

# test.py
import unittest
import mock
from StringIO import StringIO

@mock.patch('code.open_func')
class ParseCsvTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_parse(self, open_mock):
        open_mock.return_value = StringIO("my,example,input")
        # ...