《unittest》为什么需要单元测试？

Posted 2023-01-02 帅气的黑桃J

Introduction

今天在阅读django官方文档的时候看到其关于test的描述，感觉很精炼，特此记录下来。

What is test?

Tests are routines that check the operation of your code.

Testing operates at different levels. Some tests might apply to a tiny detail (does a particular model method return values as expected?) while others examine the overall operation of the software (does a sequence of user inputs on the site produce the desired result?). That’s no different from the kind of testing you did earlier in Tutorial 2, using the shell to examine the behavior of a method, or running the application and entering data to check how it behaves.

What’s different in automated tests is that the testing work is done for you by the system. You create a set of tests once, and then as you make changes to your app, you can check that your code still works as you originally intended, without having to perform time consuming manual testing.

Why you need to create tests¶

So why create tests, and why now?

You may feel that you have quite enough on your plate just learning Python/Django, and having yet another thing to learn and do may seem overwhelming and perhaps unnecessary. After all, our polls application is working quite happily now; going through the trouble of creating automated tests is not going to make it work any better. If creating the polls application is the last bit of Django programming you will ever do, then true, you don’t need to know how to create automated tests. But, if that’s not the case, now is an excellent time to learn.

Tests will save you time¶

Up to a certain point, ‘checking that it seems to work’ will be a satisfactory test. In a more sophisticated application, you might have dozens of complex interactions between components.

A change in any of those components could have unexpected consequences on the application’s behavior. Checking that it still ‘seems to work’ could mean running through your code’s functionality with twenty different variations of your test data to make sure you haven’t broken something - not a good use of your time.

That’s especially true when automated tests could do this for you in seconds. If something’s gone wrong, tests will also assist in identifying the code that’s causing the unexpected behavior.

Sometimes it may seem a chore to tear yourself away from your productive, creative programming work to face the unglamorous and unexciting business of writing tests, particularly when you know your code is working properly.

However, the task of writing tests is a lot more fulfilling than spending hours testing your application manually or trying to identify the cause of a newly-introduced problem.

Tests don’t just identify problems, they prevent them¶

It’s a mistake to think of tests merely as a negative aspect of development.

Without tests, the purpose or intended behavior of an application might be rather opaque. Even when it’s your own code, you will sometimes find yourself poking around in it trying to find out what exactly it’s doing.

Tests change that; they light up your code from the inside, and when something goes wrong, they focus light on the part that has gone wrong - even if you hadn’t even realized it had gone wrong.

Tests make your code more attractive¶

You might have created a brilliant piece of software, but you will find that many other developers will refuse to look at it because it lacks tests; without tests, they won’t trust it. Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of Django’s original developers, says “Code without tests is broken by design.”

That other developers want to see tests in your software before they take it seriously is yet another reason for you to start writing tests.

Tests help teams work together¶

The previous points are written from the point of view of a single developer maintaining an application. Complex applications will be maintained by teams. Tests guarantee that colleagues don’t inadvertently break your code (and that you don’t break theirs without knowing). If you want to make a living as a Django programmer, you must be good at writing tests!

Basic testing strategies¶

There are many ways to approach writing tests.

Some programmers follow a discipline called “test-driven development”; they actually write their tests before they write their code. This might seem counter-intuitive, but in fact it’s similar to what most people will often do anyway: they describe a problem, then create some code to solve it. Test-driven development formalizes the problem in a Python test case.

More often, a newcomer to testing will create some code and later decide that it should have some tests. Perhaps it would have been better to write some tests earlier, but it’s never too late to get started.

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out where to get started with writing tests. If you have written several thousand lines of Python, choosing something to test might not be easy. In such a case, it’s fruitful to write your first test the next time you make a change, either when you add a new feature or fix a bug.

So let’s do that right away.