How do I directly mock a superclass with python mock?

Question

I am using the python mock framework for testing (http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/) and I want to mock out a superclass and focus on testing the subclasses\' added b

Answer 1

I played around with mocking out super() as suggested by kindall. Unfortunately, after a great deal of effort it became quite complicated to handle complex inheritance cases.

After some work I realized that super() accesses the __dict__ of classes directly when resolving attributes through the MRO (it does not do a getattr type of call). The solution is to extend a mock.MagicMock() object and wrap it with a class to accomplish this. The wrapped class can then be placed in the __bases__ variable of a subclass.

The wrapped object reflects all defined attributes of the target class to the __dict__ of the wrapping class so that super() calls resolve to the properly patched in attributes within the internal MagicMock().

The following code is the solution that I have found to work thus far. Note that I actually implement this within a context handler. Also, care has to be taken to patch in the proper namespaces if importing from other modules.

This is a simple example illustrating the approach:

from mock import MagicMock
import inspect 


class _WrappedMagicMock(MagicMock):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwds):
        object.__setattr__(self, '_mockclass_wrapper', None)
        super(_WrappedMagicMock, self).__init__(*args, **kwds)

    def wrap(self, cls):
        # get defined attribtues of spec class that need to be preset
        base_attrs = dir(type('Dummy', (object,), {}))
        attrs = inspect.getmembers(self._spec_class)
        new_attrs = [a[0] for a in attrs if a[0] not in base_attrs]

        # pre set mocks for attributes in the target mock class
        for name in new_attrs:
            setattr(cls, name, getattr(self, name))

        # eat up any attempts to initialize the target mock class
        setattr(cls, '__init__', lambda *args, **kwds: None)

        object.__setattr__(self, '_mockclass_wrapper', cls)

    def unwrap(self):
        object.__setattr__(self, '_mockclass_wrapper', None)

    def __setattr__(self, name, value):
        super(_WrappedMagicMock, self).__setattr__(name, value)

        # be sure to reflect to changes wrapper class if activated
        if self._mockclass_wrapper is not None:
            setattr(self._mockclass_wrapper, name, value)

    def _get_child_mock(self, **kwds):
        # when created children mocks need only be MagicMocks
        return MagicMock(**kwds)


class A(object):
    x = 1

    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value

    def get_value_direct(self):
        return self.value

    def get_value_indirect(self):
        return self.value


class B(A):
    def __init__(self, value):
        super(B, self).__init__(value)

    def f(self):
        return 2

    def get_value_direct(self):
        return A.get_value_direct(self)

    def get_value_indirect(self):
        return super(B, self).get_value_indirect()

# nominal behavior
b = B(3)
assert b.get_value_direct() == 3
assert b.get_value_indirect() == 3
assert b.f() == 2
assert b.x == 1

# using mock class
MockClass = type('MockClassWrapper', (), {})
mock = _WrappedMagicMock(A)
mock.wrap(MockClass)

# patch the mock in
B.__bases__ = (MockClass, )
A = MockClass

# set values within the mock
mock.x = 0
mock.get_value_direct.return_value = 0
mock.get_value_indirect.return_value = 0

# mocked behavior
b = B(7)
assert b.get_value_direct() == 0
assert b.get_value_indirect() == 0
assert b.f() == 2
assert b.x == 0