Book Image

Test-Driven Python Development

By : Siddharta Govindaraj
Book Image

Test-Driven Python Development

By: Siddharta Govindaraj

Overview of this book

This book starts with a look at the test-driven development process, and how it is different from the traditional way of writing code. All the concepts are presented in the context of a real application that is developed in a step-by-step manner over the course of the book. While exploring the common types of smelly code, we will go back into our example project and clean up the smells that we find. Additionally, we will use mocking to implement the parts of our example project that depend on other systems. Towards the end of the book, we'll take a look at the most common patterns and anti-patterns associated with test-driven development, including integration of test results into the development process.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Test-Driven Python Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

How do doctests fit into the TDD process?


Now that we have a pretty good idea of doctests, the next question is: how does this fit into the TDD process? Remember, in the TDD process, we write the test first, and then the implementation later. Do doctests fit in with this process?

In a way, yes. Doctests are not a particularly good fit for doing TDD for single methods. The unittest module is a better choice for those. Where doctest shines is at package-level interaction. Explanations interspersed with examples really bring out interaction between different modules and classes within the package. Such doctests can be written out at the beginning, giving a high-level overview of how we want the package as a whole to work. These tests will fail. As individual classes and methods are written, the tests will start to pass.