Forcing unittest to function
summary
Claims that unittest can accept plain test functions by using Python introspection and shows two concrete implementations: one building test classes dynamically, one using the load_tests hook to register functions as unittest.FunctionTestCase instances. Demonstrates the actual code patterns: dir and getattr/setattr on modules, wrapping with staticmethod, and binding TestCase methods to get asserts. Measures runtime too — about 0.1s vs 8s compared to a leading third‑party framework — and the final solution works.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:46Unit test limits
- 3:34Method-based test problems
- 4:40Adding test function support
- 5:01Python introspection
- 8:18Test discovery
- 12:35Two solutions for functions
- 12:57Building test case class
- 17:36Dynamic method installation
- 18:19Wrapping test functions
- 20:25Finalizing test case class
- 20:46Using load_tests
- 24:46FunctionTestCase refactor
- 26:56Choosing load_tests
- 27:16Asserts without self
- 28:39Summary
- 29:44Q&A
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