#factory_boy

Factory Boy

If you already are familiar or just getting started with OOP and feel comfortable with actually checking the attribute in order to make it obvious that the value was changed, then Factory Boy is really a tool for you.

It is a handy tool to help you get started with writing tests and checking how objects relate to each other. 

The down-side is that you will have to always create a "context" to make sure that you have all the entries you need. Eg if you are adding an article, you first need to manually create (hardcode) the creation of a category.

class ArticleTest(TestCase): def setUp(self): self.client = Client() selc.category = CategoryFactory() def test_create_article(self): data = {'title': 'Foo', 'teaser': 'Foobar', 'category': self.category.id} self.client.post(reverse('articles:add'), data) self.assertEqual(Article.objects.all().count(), 1) article = Article.objects.get(title=data['title']) self.assertTrue(article in Article.objects.all()) self.assertTrue(article.teaser == data['teaser']) serf.assertTrue(article.category == data['category'])

Mock

Mock on the other hand, is a more advanced tool, and requires a totally different approach and even a different mentality about how the tests must be written and what should be tested.

Isolation is its main advantages and you dont have to create a "context" so that your tests can run.

class ArticleTest(TestCase): def setUp(self): self.client = Client() @mock.patch('article.models.Article') def test_create_article(self, MockArticle): data = {'title': 'Foo', 'teaser': 'Foobar', 'category': 1} self.client.post(reverse('articles:add'), data) MockArticle.objects.create.assert_called_once_with(**data)

The test's goal is to make sure that if some POST data is sent, then a .create() call is made with the correct arguments. The action done by. create() is checked in another test.