How to test or mock “if __name__ == '__main__'” contents

Question

Say I have a module with the following:

def main():
    pass

if __name__ == \"__main__\":
    main()

I want to write a unit test for the b

Answer 1

I will choose another alternative which is to exclude the if __name__ == '__main__' from the coverage report , of course you can do that only if you already have a test case for your main() function in your tests.

As for why I choose to exclude rather than writing a new test case for the whole script is because if as I stated you already have a test case for your main() function the fact that you add an other test case for the script (just for having a 100 % coverage) will be just a duplicated one.

For how to exclude the if __name__ == '__main__' you can write a coverage configuration file and add in the section report:

[report]

exclude_lines =
    if __name__ == .__main__.:

More info about the coverage configuration file can be found here.

Hope this can help.