You need tests for your web app. And it has a database. What do you do with the database during testing? Should you use the real thing? or mock it? Jeff Triplett says don't mock it.

In this episode, we talk with Jeff about testing web applications, specifically Django apps, and of course talk about the downsides of database mocking.

Links:

• "🤔 In ~12 years, I have never seen a case where mocking a database was a good idea. ..." 
• Django News
• Moto
• Test & Code 103: Django - Lacey Williams Henschel
• Model Bakery: Smart fixtures for better tests 
• Faker

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Playwright is an end to end automated testing framework for web apps with Python support and even a pytest plugin.

Links:

• Playwright for Python
• Why Playwright?
• playwright-pytest

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

I always learn a lot when I talk to Brett, and this episode is no exception.
 We talk about the packaging workflow, tools, changes, pyproject.toml, flit, setuptools, and so much more.
 I hope you learn as much as I did in this great discussion.

Links:

• pytest-srcpaths
• Python Packaging User Guide
• pypa/packaging: Core utilities for Python packages
• flit and requires-python
• Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter — Python 3.9.2 documentation
• Flit
• setuptools
• PEP 518 -- Specifying Minimum Build System Requirements for Python Projects | Python.org
• PEP 517 -- A build-system independent format for source trees | Python.org
• Flit editable installs with --symlink or --pth-file
• PEP 440 -- Version Identification and Dependency Specification | Python.org
• Specifying requires-python with flit
• wheel
• Universal 1 binary
• Universal 2 binary
• Cython: C-Extensions for Python
• CFFI
• pybind11: Seamless operability between C++11 and Python
• Conda
• conda environments
• conda-forge
• VaultsOfParnassus

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Adventure, or Colossal Cave Adventure, was written between 1975 and 1977 in Fortran. Brandon Rhodes ported it to Python 3, initial release in 2011, and still maintains it. We talk to Brandon about this wonderful game.

What's happening is that I'm playing adventure, which you can pip install thanks to Brandon Rohdes. Adventure is a faithful port to Python 3 from the original 1977 FORTRAN code by Crowther and Woods that lets you explore Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold, ...

In this episode, we talk with Brandon Rhodes about this marvelous game.

Links:

• adventure · PyPI
• python-adventure: Original Colossal Caves adventure game, but in Python 3
• Brandon Rhodes Personal Site
• Python Design Patterns
• pyephem: Scientific-grade astronomy routines for Python
• python-skyfield: Elegant astronomy for Python
• Adventure in Python 3 - announcement blog post from 2012
• NetHack
• FTL: Faster Than Light
• PEP 517 -- A build-system independent format for source trees | Python.org

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Coming up with a testing strategy doesn't have to be stressful. Prioritizing features to test, and generating test cases for each feature can be fairly quick and painless. This episode covers a strategy for both that can be applied to many types of software.

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Corey Quinn is the Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group. He's also a podcaster and writes a newsletter. And he also automates things with Python. But he doesn't write tests. Let's find out why.

Reason for the interview. Rough summary of a twitter conversation:

This diagram is referenced in the show, the Last Week In AWS Newsletter Production Pipeline.

Full Transcript

Special Guest: Corey Quinn.

Sponsored By:

• PyCharm Professional: Try PyCharm Pro for 4 months and learn how PyCharm will save you time. Promo Code: TESTANDCODE22

Links:

• Last Week in AWS

How do you test installed packages using coverage.py? 

Also, a couple followups from last week's episode on using coverage for single file applications. 

Links:

• episode 147: Testing Single File Python Applications/Scripts with pytest and coverage
• Specifying source files — Coverage.py documentation
• Testing & Packaging - Hynek
• ack

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Have you ever written a single file Python application or script?
 Have you written tests for it?
 Do you check code coverage?

This is the topic of this weeks episode, spurred on by a listener question.

The questions:

• For single file scripts, I'd like to have the test code included right there in the file. Can I do that with pytest?
• If I can, can I use code coverage on it?

The example code discussed in the episode: script.py

Suggestion by @cfbolz if you need to import pytest:

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Building any software, including web apps and APIs requires testing.
 There's automated testing, and there's manual testing.

 In between that is exploratory testing aided by automation tools. 

Michael Kennedy joins the show this week to share some of the tools he uses during development and maintenance.

We talk about tools used for semi-automated exploratory testing. 
 We also talk about some of the other tools and techniques he uses to keep Talk Python Training, Talk Python, and Python Bytes all up and running smoothly. 

We talk about:

• Postman
• ngrok
• sitemap link testing
• scripts for manual processes
• using failover servers during maintenance, redeployments, etc
• gitHub webhooks and scripts to between fail over servers and production during deployments automatically
• floating IP addresses 
• services to monitor your site: StatusCake, BetterUptime
• the affect of monitoring on analytics
• crash reporting: Rollbar, Sentry
• response times
• load testing: Locus

Links:

• Python Bytes Podcast
• Talk Python To Me Podcast
• Talk Python Training
• Postman
• ngrok
• StatusCake
• Better Uptime
• Rollbar
• Sentry
• Locust
• 12 requests per second in Python

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

A discussion about mocking in Python with the original contributor of unittest.mock, Michael Foord.

Of course we discuss mocking and unittest.mock. 

We also discuss:

• testing philosophy
• unit testing and what a unit is
• TDD
• where Michael's towel is, and what color

Micheal was instrumental in the building of testing tools for Python, and continues to be a pragmatic source of honest testing philosopy in a field that has a lot of contradictory information.

Links:

• unittest.mock - Python docs
• Mocks Aren't Stubs - Martin Fowler
• pytest-mock
• mock.patch
• Autospeccing
• Arrange Act Assert
• testing-in-python mailing list
• Classical and Mockist Testing — Classical and Mockist Testing 
• Test First Programming / Test First Development
• episode 102: Cosmic Python, TDD, testing and external dependencies - Harry Percival
• episode 132: mocking in Python - Anna-Lena Popkes
• pytest
• unittest - Python docs
• pytest assert usage
• 30 best practices for software development and testing | Opensource.com