Hands-On Lab: Running Test With Nose
Estimated time needed: 30 minutes
Welcome to the Running Tests with Nose lab. In this lab, you will learn how to use fundamental tools for running unit tests in Python.
Learning Objectives
After completing this lab, you will be able to:
• Install Nose, Pinocchio, and Coverage
• Run unit tests with unittest and Nose
• Produce color-coded test output
• Add coverage reports to your test output
About Theia
Theia is an open-source IDE (Integrated Development Environment), that can be run on desktop or on cloud. You will be using the Theia IDE to do this lab. When you log into the Theia environment, you are presented with a ‘dedicated computer on the cloud’ exclusively for you. This is
available to you as long as you work on the labs. Once you log off, this ‘dedicated computer on the cloud’ is deleted along with any files you may have created. So, it is a good idea to finish your labs in a single session. If you finish part of the lab and return to the Theia lab later, you may
have to start from the beginning. Plan to work out all your Theia labs when you have the time to finish the complete lab in a single session.
Set Up the Lab Environment
You have a little preparation to do before you can start the lab.
Open a terminal window by using the menu in the editor: Terminal > New Terminal.
In the terminal, if you are not already in the /home/projects folder, change to your project folder now.
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1. cd /home/project
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Clone the Git Repository
Now let’s get the code that you need to test. To do this, you will use the git clone command to clone the git repository:
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1. git clone https://github.com/ibm-developer-skills-network/duwjx-tdd_bdd_PracticeCode.git
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Your output should look similar to the image below:
Change into the Lab Folder
Once you have cloned the repository, change to the directory named: duwjx-tdd_bdd_PracticeCode
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1. cd duwjx-tdd_bdd_PracticeCode
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To go into the first set of labs, change into the labs/01_running_tests_with_nose/ directory:
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1. cd labs/01_running_tests_with_nose/
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List the contents of this directory to see the artifacts for this lab.
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1. ls -l
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The directory should look like the listing below:
Note: You must have a few exercise files that you will be running in the steps to follow.
You can also view the files cloned in the file explorer.
Step 1: Working with unittest
You are ready to run your first tests. The unittest module is built into Python 3. You can invoke it through the Python interpreter by passing it the argument -m to run a module, and then unittest to give it the name of the module that you want to run.
In the terminal, run the following command to run the tests using the Python unittest package:
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1. python3 -m unittest
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In the output you will see that all 11 tests passed as indicated by the 11 dots. Had there been any errors, you would have seen the letter E in place of the dot, representing an error in that test.
More verbose output
You can make the output more useful by adding the -v flag to turn on verbose mode. Run the command below for more useful output:
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1. python3 -m unittest -v
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Also notice that verbose mode gives you lots of duplicate information like the test function name followed by the docstring. Next, you will see how nose handles this.
Step 2: Working with Nose
There is a test runner called nose that you can use to produce better test output. It is a Python package that you can install using the Python package manager pip utility.
Install Nose using pip:
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1. python3.8 -m pip install nose
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Note: *To refresh your memory on Nose, review the Tests with Nose�
To see verbose output from nose, run nosetests -v. The verbose output from Nose will return nicer output than from unittest because it only returns the docstring comments:
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1. nosetests -v
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Step 3: Adding color with Pinocchio
Another way to make your output look better is with a plugin called pinocchio. With this plugin, you can get output as a specification similar to Rspec and also add color to the output. The color really gives you the Red/Green/Refactor workflow that TDD is famous for.
Install pinocchio using pip.
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1. python3.8 -m pip install pinocchio
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To get nicer formatting and a colorful output, run nose again and add the --with-spec --spec-color parameters:
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1. nosetests --with-spec --spec-color
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Note: In the output, green color indicates that all tests have passed. In case any test fails, the color for that test in the output will be red. Also note that you no longer need the -v because --with-spec already gives verbose output.
Step 4: Adding test coverage
To know if you鴴en enough tests, you need to know how many lines of code your tests cover. The coverage tool will calculate the number of lines of code executed during your tests, against the total lines of code, and report that as a percentage of coverage.
Install the coverage tool so that you can check your test coverage:
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1. python3.8 -m pip install coverage
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Next, call coverage through nose by adding the --with-coverage parameter.
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1. nosetests --with-spec --spec-color --with-coverage
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Step 5: Create missing coverage report
One useful feature of the coverage tool is that it can report which lines of code are missing coverage. With that information, you know the lines for which you need to add more test cases so that your testing executes those missing lines of code.
To get the missing coverage report, run the below command in the terminal:
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1. coverage report -m
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These test cases produce 100% coverage but notice that a new column has been added with the Missing heading. This is where any line numbers would show up for lines without test coverage.
Step 6: Automating these parameters
Up until now you have typed out a lot of command parameters when running tests with nose. Alternatively, you can save all the parameters in a configuration file so that you don’t have to type them in every time.
Create a new file named setup.cfg under duwjx-tdd_bdd_PracticeCode/labs/01_running_tests_with_nose directory. Here are the steps:
1. On the window to the right, click the File menu and select the New File option, as shown in the image below:
2. A pop-up appears with title New File, as shown in the image below. Enter setup.cfg as the file name and then click OK.
3. A file setup.cfg will be created for you.
Open setup.cfg in IDE
4. Copy and paste the below code into setup.cfg:
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1. [nosetests]
2. verbosity=2
3. with-spec=1
4. spec-color=1
5. with-coverage=1
6. cover-erase=1
7. cover-package=triangle
8.
9. [coverage:report]
10. show_missing = True
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Do not forget to save the setup.cfg file.
Step 7: Run nosetests with config
Now that you have established your setup.cfg file, go to your terminal and run nosetests without any parameters:
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1. nosetests
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Now you ed all your parameters and gotten colorful output, by simply running nosetests.
Conclusion
Congratulations on Completing the Lab on Running Tests with Nose
You now know how to run basic and verbose unit tests with Nose. You also know how to use the Pinocchio and Coverage plugins to produce nicer test output that really brings the Red/Green/Refactor workflow to life. Feel free to play around with these commands some more or move on
to the next lesson.
Now you should use these tools in your own projects to produce actionable test cases reports.
Author(s)
John J. Rofrano
Contributor(s)
Srishti Srivastava
Changelog
Date Version Changed by Change Description
2022-04-08 1.0 Srishti Create new lab
2022-04-17 1.1 Rofrano Fixed image links
2022-04-17 1.2 Zach Rash Proofreading and edits
2023-12-22 1.3 K Sundararajan Instructions updated based on Python 3.8
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