The unittest module primarily provides a class TestCase to facilitate the writing of tests for “units” of code inside a larger project. Larger software projects benefit from unit tests, because smaller units of the software can be tested individually and checked for errors before they are added to the main project. After a project has grown over time, a suite of unit tests can also be very helpful in debugging, because the source of an error can quickly be located.
Typically test cases are implemented as child classes of the unittest.TestCase class. The methods TestCase.setUp() can be overloaded to provide common setup procedures for all test methods; the method TestCase.tearDown() can be used for cleanup; both methods are executed before (after) each test. All methods of the form TestCase.test*() are considered test cases and will be executed by unittest, if unittest.main() is called. Alternatively, tests can be run using the python -m unittest command with the module name.
To run several tests suites at once, the command line utility nosetests (available in the separate nose package) can be used: it scans all Python scrips in the current directory and executes all available test cases.
The code used during the lesson is available in the inclass folder, the somewhat longer original material is available in the original folder.
An example of a more advanced use case, where individual test can be selected and inheritance between TestCase’s is used, can be found here.