Want to call a method only once for unittest.TestCase--but not sure how?

[Francesco Bochicchio]

On Sep 28, 12:45 pm, Oltmans <rolf.oltm... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello fellow python hackers,
>
> I'm not an expert when it comes to Python and I'm totally stuck in a
> situation. All of our unit tests are written using built-in 'unittest'
> module. We've a requirement where we want to run a method only once
> for our unit tests. Some background: all of our tests are sub-classes
> of unittest.TestCase module just like following (copy pasting from
> idle)
>
> class Calculator(unittest.TestCase):
>
>     def setUp(self): pass
>     def tearDown(self): pass
>
>     def test_add(self):
>
>         print 'adder'
>         print '---------------'
>
>     def test_multiply(self):
>         print 'multiplier'
>         print '---------------'
>
>     def test_divide(self):
>         print '==========='
>         print 'Divide test'
>         print '==========='
>
> Our requirement is that for every unit test class we want to run a
> method only once. Method setUp() won't help because it will be called
> before every test method. I've tried using the following
>
> def __init__(self):
>         unittest.TestCase.__init__(self)
>
> but it throws the following error
>
> E:\PyPy\Practice>python runner.py
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>     suite  = unittest.defaultTestLoader.loadTestsFromNames
> (['Tests.Calculator.Te
> stCase'])
>   File "C:\Python25\lib\unittest.py", line 565, in loadTestsFromNames
>     suites = [self.loadTestsFromName(name, module) for name in names]
>   File "C:\Python25\lib\unittest.py", line 547, in loadTestsFromName
>     return self.loadTestsFromTestCase(obj)
>   File "C:\Python25\lib\unittest.py", line 507, in
> loadTestsFromTestCase
>     return self.suiteClass(map(testCaseClass, testCaseNames))
> TypeError: __init__() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)
>
> So I'm completely stumped as to how to create a method that will only
> be called only once for Calculator class. Can you please suggest any
> ideas? Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The constructor of unittest.TestCase takes an optional test name as
argument, and in the failing code it is called with such an argument,
so when you are subclassing you have to keep the same interface:

>>> class Calculator(unittest.TestCase):
	def __init__(self, name='runTest') :
             unittest.TestCase.__init__(self, name)
             # your staff here

Note that __init__ gets called one time for test *instance*, not one
time for test class. If you want the latest, you could define
classmethods that you call
explicitely at the beginning of your test code:

      class Calculator(unittets.TestCase):
          @classmethod
          def initialize(cls, ...):
              # your staff here

      def test(...): # or wherever your test code starts  code
          Calculator.initialize()
          # other test class initializations
          # run your tests

HTH

Ciao
------
FB