unit testing - python mocking raw input in unittests

Question

Suppose I have this python code:

def answer():
    ans = raw_input('enter yes or no')
    if ans == 'yes':
        print 'you entered yes'
    if ans == 'no':
        print 'you entered no'

How do I write a unittest for this ? I know i have to use 'Mock' but I don't understand how. Can anyone make some simple example ?

Answer 1

You can't patch input but you can wrap it to use mock.patch(). Here is a solution:

from unittest.mock import patch
from unittest import TestCase


def get_input(text):
    return input(text)


def answer():
    ans = get_input('enter yes or no')
    if ans == 'yes':
        return 'you entered yes'
    if ans == 'no':
        return 'you entered no'


class Test(TestCase):

    # get_input will return 'yes' during this test
    @patch('yourmodule.get_input', return_value='yes')
    def test_answer_yes(self, input):
        self.assertEqual(answer(), 'you entered yes')

    @patch('yourmodule.get_input', return_value='no')
    def test_answer_no(self, input):
        self.assertEqual(answer(), 'you entered no')

Keep in mind that this snippet will only work in Python versions 3.3+