Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By : Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Book Image

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators

By: Ganesh Sanjiv Naik

Overview of this book

Python has evolved over time and extended its features in relation to every possible IT operation. Python is simple to learn, yet has powerful libraries that can be used to build powerful Python scripts for solving real-world problems and automating administrators' routine activities. The objective of this book is to walk through a series of projects that will teach readers Python scripting with each project. This book will initially cover Python installation and quickly revise basic to advanced programming fundamentals. The book will then focus on the development process as a whole, from setup to planning to building different tools. It will include IT administrators' routine activities (text processing, regular expressions, file archiving, and encryption), network administration (socket programming, email handling, the remote controlling of devices using telnet/ssh, and protocols such as SNMP/DHCP), building graphical user interface, working with websites (Apache log file processing, SOAP and REST APIs communication, and web scraping), and database administration (MySQL and similar database data administration, data analytics, and reporting). By the end of this book, you will be able to use the latest features of Python and be able to build powerful tools that will solve challenging, real-world tasks
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Methods used in unit testing

Whenever we use unittest, there are some methods we use in our script. These methods are the following:

  • assertEqual() and assertNotEqual(): This checks for an expected result
  • assertTrue() and assertFalse(): This verifies a condition
  • assertRaises(): This verifies that a specific exception gets raised
  • setUp() and tearDown(): This defines instructions that are executed before and after each test method

You can use the unittest module from the command line as well. So, you can run the previous test script as follows:

student@ubuntu:~$ python3 -m unittest test_addition.py
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.000s

OK

Now, we will see another example. We will create two scripts: if_example.py and test_if.py. if_example.py will be our normal script and test_if.py will contain test case. In this test, we...