5.2 Testing frameworks#

Estimated time for this notebook: 15 minutes

Why use testing frameworks?#

Frameworks should simplify our lives:

  • Should be easy to add simple test

  • Should be possible to create complex test:

    • Fixtures

    • Setup/Tear down

    • Parameterized tests (same test, mostly same input)

  • Find all our tests in a complicated code-base

  • Run all our tests with a quick command

  • Run only some tests, e.g. test --only "tests about fields"

  • Report failing tests

  • Additional goodies, such as code coverage

Common testing frameworks#

pytest framework: usage#

pytest is a recommended python testing framework.

We can use its tools in the notebook for on-the-fly tests in the notebook. This, happily, includes the negative-tests example we were looking for a moment ago.

def I_only_accept_positive_numbers(number):
    # Check input
    if number < 0:
        raise ValueError("Input " + str(number) + " is negative")

    # Do something

from pytest import raises

with raises(ValueError):
    I_only_accept_positive_numbers(-5)

but the real power comes when we write a test file alongside our code files in our homemade packages:

%%bash
#on windows replace '%%bash' with %%cmd
rm -rf saskatchewan
mkdir -p saskatchewan
touch saskatchewan/__init__.py #on windows replace with 'type nul > saskatchewan/__init__.py'

%%writefile saskatchewan/overlap.py
def overlap(field1, field2):
    left1, bottom1, top1, right1 = field1
    left2, bottom2, top2, right2 = field2

    overlap_left = max(left1, left2)
    overlap_bottom = max(bottom1, bottom2)
    overlap_right = min(right1, right2)
    overlap_top = min(top1, top2)
    # Here's our wrong code again
    overlap_height = overlap_top - overlap_bottom
    overlap_width = overlap_right - overlap_left

    return overlap_height * overlap_width

Writing saskatchewan/overlap.py

%%writefile saskatchewan/test_overlap.py
from .overlap import overlap


def test_full_overlap():
    assert overlap((1.0, 1.0, 4.0, 4.0), (2.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.0)) == 1.0


def test_partial_overlap():
    assert overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (2, 2, 3, 4.5)) == 2.0


def test_no_overlap():
    assert overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5)) == 0.0

Writing saskatchewan/test_overlap.py

%%bash
#%%cmd #(windows)
cd saskatchewan
pytest || echo "Tests failed"

============================= test session starts ==============================

platform linux -- Python 3.8.18, pytest-7.4.4, pluggy-1.3.0

rootdir: /home/runner/work/rse-course/rse-course/module05_testing_your_code/saskatchewan

plugins: pylama-8.4.1, anyio-4.2.0, cov-4.1.0

collected 3 items



test_overlap.py ..F                                                      [100%]



=================================== FAILURES ===================================

_______________________________ test_no_overlap ________________________________



    def test_no_overlap():

>       assert overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5)) == 0.0

E       assert 0.25 == 0.0

E        +  where 0.25 = overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5))



test_overlap.py:13: AssertionError

=========================== short test summary info ============================

FAILED test_overlap.py::test_no_overlap - assert 0.25 == 0.0

 +  where 0.25 = overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5))

========================= 1 failed, 2 passed in 0.10s ==========================

Tests failed

Note that it reported which test had failed, how many tests ran, and how many failed.

The symbol ..F means there were three tests, of which the third one failed.

Pytest will:

  • automagically finds files test_*.py

  • collects all subroutines called test_*

  • runs tests and reports results

Some options:

  • help: pytest --help

  • run only tests for a given feature: pytest -k foo # tests with ‘foo’ in the test name

Coverage reports#

Using pytest it is possisble to see, which lines of code have or haven’t been execuded by you tests.

The command below will produce a html files which highlights the coverage of your tests.

%%bash
#%%cmd #(windows)
cd saskatchewan
pytest --cov=. --cov-report=html || echo "Tests failed"
# MacOS:
# open htmlcov/index.html

============================= test session starts ==============================

platform linux -- Python 3.8.18, pytest-7.4.4, pluggy-1.3.0

rootdir: /home/runner/work/rse-course/rse-course/module05_testing_your_code/saskatchewan

plugins: pylama-8.4.1, anyio-4.2.0, cov-4.1.0

collected 3 items



test_overlap.py ..F                                                      [100%]



=================================== FAILURES ===================================

_______________________________ test_no_overlap ________________________________



    def test_no_overlap():

>       assert overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5)) == 0.0

E       assert 0.25 == 0.0

E        +  where 0.25 = overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5))



test_overlap.py:13: AssertionError



---------- coverage: platform linux, python 3.8.18-final-0 -----------

Coverage HTML written to dir htmlcov



=========================== short test summary info ============================

FAILED test_overlap.py::test_no_overlap - assert 0.25 == 0.0

 +  where 0.25 = overlap((1, 1, 4, 4), (4.5, 4.5, 5, 5))

========================= 1 failed, 2 passed in 0.08s ==========================

Tests failed

Testing with floating points#

Floating points are not reals#

Floating points are inaccurate representations of real numbers:

1.0 == 0.99999999999999999 is true to the last bit.

This can lead to numerical errors during calculations: \(1000 (a - b) \neq 1000a - 1000b\)

1000.0 * 1.0 - 1000.0 * 0.9999999999999998

2.2737367544323206e-13

1000.0 * (1.0 - 0.9999999999999998)

2.220446049250313e-13

Both results are wrong: 2e-13 is the correct answer.

The size of the error will depend on the magnitude of the floating points:

1000.0 * 1e5 - 1000.0 * 0.9999999999999998e5

1.4901161193847656e-08

The result should be 2e-8.

Comparing floating points#

Use the “approx”, for a default of a relative tolerance of \(10^{-6}\)

from pytest import approx

assert 0.7 == approx(0.7 + 1e-7)

Or be more explicit:

magnitude = 0.7
assert 0.7 == approx(0.701, rel=0.1, abs=0.1)

Choosing tolerances is a big area of debate: https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2014/10/why-we-dont-teach-testing.html

Comparing vectors of floating points#

Numerical vectors are best represented using numpy.

from numpy import array, pi

vector_of_reals = array([0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4]) * pi

Numpy ships with a number of assertions (in numpy.testing) to make comparison easy:

from numpy import array, pi
from numpy.testing import assert_allclose

expected = array([0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 1e-12]) * pi
actual = array([0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 2e-12]) * pi
actual[:-1] += 1e-6
assert_allclose(actual, expected, rtol=1e-5, atol=1e-8)

It compares the difference between actual and expected to atol + rtol * abs(expected).