mirror of https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask.git
Armin Ronacher
15 years ago
4 changed files with 127 additions and 11 deletions
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.. _testing: |
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Testing Flask Applications |
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========================== |
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**Something that is untested is broken.** |
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Not sure where that is coming from, and it's not entirely correct, but |
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also not that far from the truth. Untested applications make it hard to |
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improve existing code and developers of untested applications tend to |
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become pretty paranoid. If an application however has automated tests you |
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can savely change things and you will instantly know if your change broke |
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something. |
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Flask gives you a couple of ways to test applications. It mainly does |
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that by exposing the Werkzeug test :class:`~werkzeug.Client` class to your |
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code and handling the context locals for you. You can then use that with |
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your favourite testing solution. In this documentation we will us the |
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:mod:`unittest` package that comes preinstalled with each Python |
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installation. |
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The Application |
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--------------- |
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First we need an application to test for functionality. Let's start |
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simple with a Hello World application (`hello.py`):: |
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from flask import Flask, render_template_string |
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app = Flask(__name__) |
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@app.route('/') |
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@app.route('/<name>') |
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def hello(name='World'): |
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return render_template_string(''' |
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<!doctype html> |
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<title>Hello {{ name }}!</title> |
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<h1>Hello {{ name }}!</h1> |
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''', name=name) |
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The Testing Skeleton |
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-------------------- |
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In order to test that, we add a second module ( |
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`hello_tests.py`) and create a unittest skeleton there:: |
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import unittest |
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import hello |
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class HelloWorldTestCase(unittest.TestCase): |
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def setUp(self): |
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self.app = hello.app.test_client() |
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if __name__ == '__main__': |
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unittest.main() |
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The code in the `setUp` function creates a new test client. That function |
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is called before each individual test function. What the test client does |
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for us is giving us a simple interface to the application. We can trigger |
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test requests to the application and the client will also keep track of |
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cookies for us. |
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If we now run that testsuite, we should see the following output:: |
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$ python hello_tests.py |
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---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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Ran 0 tests in 0.000s |
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OK |
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Even though it did not run any tests, we already know that our hello |
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application is syntactically valid, otherwise the import would have died |
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with an exception. |
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The First Test |
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-------------- |
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Now we can add the first test. Let's check that the application greets us |
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with "Hello World" if we access it on ``/``. For that we modify our |
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created test case class so that it looks like this:: |
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class HelloWorldTestCase(unittest.TestCase): |
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def setUp(self): |
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self.app = hello.app.test_client() |
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def test_hello_world(self): |
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rv = self.app.get('/') |
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assert 'Hello World!' in rv.data |
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Test functions begin with the word `test`. Every function named like that |
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will be picked up automatically. By using `self.app.get` we can send an |
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HTTP `GET` request to the application with the given path. The return |
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value will be a :class:`~flask.Flask.response_class` object. We can now |
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use the :attr:`~werkzeug.BaseResponse.data` attribute to inspect the |
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return value (as string) from the application. In this case, we ensure |
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that ``'Hello World!'`` is part of the output. |
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Run it again and you should see one passing test. Let's add a second test |
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here:: |
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def test_hello_name(self): |
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rv = self.app.get('/Peter') |
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assert 'Hello Peter!' in rv.data |
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Of course you can submit forms with the test client as well. For that and |
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other features of the test client, check the documentation of the Werkzeug |
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test :class:`~werkzeug.Client` and the tests of the MiniTwit example |
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application: |
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- Werkzeug Test :class:`~werkzeug.Client` |
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- `MiniTwit Example`_ |
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.. _MiniTwit Example: |
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http://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/tree/master/examples/minitwit/ |
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