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approvaltestsminimal 14.0.0

ApprovalTests.Python

Contents

What can I use ApprovalTests for?
Getting Started

What Are Approvals
New Projects

Minimal Example Tutorial

Adding to Existing Projects

Overview

Example using pytest
Example using unittest
Example using CLI

Usage
Argument Definitions

Reporters

Selecting a Reporter
JSON file for collection of reporters

Support and Documentation

Missing Documentation?
Dependencies

Required dependencies
Extra dependencies

For developers

Weekly Ensemble
Pull Requests

Capturing Human Intelligence - ApprovalTests is an open source assertion/verification library to aid testing.
approvaltests is the ApprovalTests port for Python.
For more information see: www.approvaltests.com.

What can I use ApprovalTests for?
You can use ApprovalTests to verify objects that require more than a simple assert including long strings, large arrays,
and complex hash structures and objects. ApprovalTests really shines when you need a more granular look at the test
failure. Sometimes, trying to find a small difference in a long string printed to STDOUT is just too hard!
ApprovalTests solves this problem by providing reporters which let you view the test results in one of many popular diff
utilities.
Getting Started
What Are Approvals
If you need to gain a better understanding or are new to this concept, start here.
New Projects
If you are starting a new project, we suggest you use the Starter Project.
You can just clone this and go. It's great for exercises, katas, and green field projects.
Minimal Example Tutorial
If this is first time approvaltesting in python, consider starting here: Minimal Example Tutorial
Adding to Existing Projects
From pypi:
pip install approvaltests

Overview
Approvals work by comparing the test results to a golden master. If no golden master exists you can create a snapshot
of the current test results and use that as the golden master. The reporter helps you manage the golden master.
Whenever your current results differ from the golden master, Approvals will launch an external application for you to
examine the differences. Either you will update the master because you expected the changes and they are good,
or you will go back to your code and update or roll back your changes to get your results back in line with the
golden master.
Example using pytest

from approvaltests.approvals import verify

def test_simple():
result = "Hello ApprovalTests"
verify(result)

snippet source | anchor

Install the plugin pytest-approvaltests and use it to select a reporter:
pip install pytest-approvaltests
pytest --approvaltests-use-reporter='PythonNative'

The reporter is used both to alert you to changes in your test output, and to provide a tool to update the golden
master. In this snippet, we chose the 'PythonNative' reporter when we ran the tests. For more information about selecting
reporters see the documentation
Example using unittest

import unittest

from approvaltests.approvals import verify

class GettingStartedTest(unittest.TestCase):
def test_simple(self):
verify("Hello ApprovalTests")

if __name__ == "__main__":
unittest.main()

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This example has the same behaviour as the pytest version, but uses the built-in test framework unittest instead.
Example using CLI
You can invoke a verify() call from the command line. This allows invoking python approvals from any other stack via subprocesses.
Usage
python -m approvaltests --test-id hello --received "hello world!"

or
python -m approvaltests -t hello -r "hello world!"

or
echo "hello world!" | python -m approvaltests -t hello

Argument Definitions

--test-id or -t: Test identifier used to name the approved.txt and received.txt files for the test.

--received or -r: The output of the program under test (a string) that is passed to the verify method.

stdin: Instead of providing a received argument, you may use stdin.

Reporters
Selecting a Reporter
All verify functions take an optional options parameter that can configure reporters (as well as many other aspects).
ApprovalTests.Python comes with a few reporters configured, supporting Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
In the example shown below, we pass in an options with a reporter we're selecting directly:

class TestSelectReporterFromClass(unittest.TestCase):
def test_simple(self):
verify("Hello", options=Options().with_reporter(report_with_beyond_compare()))

snippet source | anchor

You can also use the GenericDiffReporterFactory to find and select the first diff utility that exists on our system.
An advantage of this method is you can modify the reporters.json file directly to handle your unique system.

class TestSelectReporter(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.factory = GenericDiffReporterFactory()

def test_simple(self):
verify(
"Hello", options=Options().with_reporter(self.factory.get("BeyondCompare"))
)

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Or you can build your own GenericDiffReporter on the fly

class GettingStartedTest(unittest.TestCase):
def test_simple(self):
verify(
"Hello",
options=Options().with_reporter(
GenericDiffReporter.create(r"C:\my\favorite\diff\utility.exe")
),
)

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As long as C:/my/favorite/diff/utility.exe can be invoked from the command line using the format utility.exe file1 file2
then it will be compatible with GenericDiffReporter. Otherwise you will have to derive your own reporter, which
we won't cover here.
JSON file for collection of reporters
To wrap things up, I should note that you can completely replace the collection of reporters known to the reporter
factory by writing your own JSON file and loading it.
For example if you had C:/myreporters.json
[
["BeyondCompare4", "C:/Program Files (x86)/Beyond Compare 4/BCompare.exe"],
["WinMerge", "C:/Program Files (x86)/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe"],
["Tortoise", "C:/Program Files (x86)/TortoiseSVN/bin/tortoisemerge.exe"]
]

You could then use that file by loading it into the factory:
import unittest

from approvaltests.approvals import verify
from approvaltests.reporters.generic_diff_reporter_factory import GenericDiffReporterFactory

class GettingStartedTest(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
factory = GenericDiffReporterFactory()
factory.load('C:/myreporters.json')
self.reporter = factory.get_first_working()

def test_simple(self):
verify('Hello', self.reporter)

if __name__ == "__main__":
unittest.main()

Of course, if you have some interesting new reporters in myreporters.json then please consider updating the
reporters.json file that ships with Approvals and submitting a pull request.
Support and Documentation

Documentation

GitHub: https://github.com/approvals/ApprovalTests.Python

ApprovalTests Homepage: http://www.approvaltests.com

Missing Documentation?
If there is documentation you wish existed, please add a page request to this issue.
Dependencies
ApprovalTests require Python 3.8 or greater and the following dependencies:
Required dependencies
These dependencies are always required for approvaltests

pytest>=4.0.0
empty-files>=0.0.3
typing_extensions>=3.6.2

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Extra dependencies
These dependencies are required if you are going to use the related functionality
If you want the bare minimum you can use the pypi project
approvaltests-minimal

pyperclip>=1.5.29 # For Clipboard Reporter
beautifulsoup4>=4.4.0 # For verify_html
allpairspy>=2.1.0 # For PairwiseCombinations
mrjob>=0.7.4 # For MrJob
testfixtures >= 7.1.0 # For verify_logging
mock >= 5.1.0 # For verify_logging

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For developers
Weekly Ensemble
The best way to contribute is to join our weekly mob/ensemble
Pull Requests
Pull requests are welcomed, particularly those accompanied by automated tests.
To run the self-tests:
./run_tests.sh
This will run the self-tests on several python versions. We support python 3.8 and above.
All pull requests will be pre-checked using GitHub actions to execute all these tests. You can see the results of test
runs here.