assertion pattern rather than the record -> replay pattern. Action - assertion puts your tests after you have used the objects, which seems more natural and means that you can make assertions about only

Mock 0.5.0 has just been released. * Mock Homepage http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/mock/ * Download Mock 0.5.0 release (zip) http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/mock-0.5.0.zip * Mock Documentation as a PDF http://www.voidspace.org.uk/downloads/mock.pdf * Mock entry on PyPI http://pypi.python.org/pypi/mock/ * Repository and Issue Tracker on Google Code http://code.google.com/p/mock/ This *isn't* backwards compatible as it cleans up the API in a few ways, but they're all good changes I promise. One of the new features is that the Mock class now supports wrapping objects; using the ``wraps`` keyword. Mock is a library for the creation of simple mock objects that track how they are used so that you can make assertions. It uses the action - the behavior you are interested in. Mock also contains two decorators (``patch`` and ``patch_object``) which make it easy to safely mock out dependencies in the module under test purely within the scope of the test itself (unpatching is done automatically on exit whether or not the test passes). One of the changes in this release is that these decorators also become context managers allowing them to be used with the 'with statement'. Mock can be installed with: ``easy_install mock`` The changelog for all changes in this release is: * Made DEFAULT part of the public api. * Documentation built with Sphinx. * ``side_effect`` is now called with the same arguments as the mock is called with and if returns a non-DEFAULT value that is automatically set as the ``mock.return_value``. * ``wraps`` keyword argument used for wrapping objects (and passing calls through to the wrapped object). * ``Mock.reset`` renamed to ``Mock.reset_mock``, as reset is a common API name. * ``patch`` / ``patch_object`` are now context managers and can be used with ``with``. * A new 'create' keyword argument to patch and patch_object that allows them to patch (and unpatch) attributes that don't exist. (Potentially unsafe to use - it can allow you to have tests that pass when they are testing an API that doesn't exist - use at your own risk!) * The methods keyword argument to Mock has been removed and merged with spec. The spec argument can now be a list of methods or an object to take the spec from. * Nested patches may now be applied in a different order (created mocks passed in the opposite order). This is actually a bugfix. * patch and patch_object now take a spec keyword argument. If spec is passed in as 'True' then the Mock created will take the object it is replacing as its spec object. If the object being replaced is a class, then the return value for the mock will also use the class as a spec. * A Mock created without a spec will not attempt to mock any magic methods / attributes (they will raise an ``AttributeError`` instead). Many thanks to all those who gave feedback, feature requests and patches! What *isn't* in 0.5.0 is support for mocking magic methods. I do have a technique in mind for this, which I implemented for the container methods. It is very clean, but different from the pattern used to mock out other methods. As I'm not currently using it I'm going to wait until I need it and see if it works well in practise. If you're interested in trying it, the code (with full documentation) in a 'magics branch': * http://code.google.com/p/mock/source/browse/#svn/branches/magics