How to strip decorators from a function in Python

Question

Let's say I have the following:

def with_connection(f):
    def decorated(*args, **kwargs):
        f(get_connection(...), *args, **kwargs)
    return decorated

@with_connection
def spam(connection):
    # Do something

I want to test the spam function without going through the hassle of setting up a connection (or whatever the decorator is doing).

Given spam, how do I strip the decorator from it and get the underlying "undecorated" function?

Answer 1

There's been a bit of an update for this question. If you're using Python 3, you can use __wrapped__ property for decorators from stdlib.

Here's an example from Python Cookbook, 3rd edition, section 9.3 Unwrapping decorators

>>> @somedecorator
>>> def add(x, y):
...     return x + y
...
>>> orig_add = add.__wrapped__
>>> orig_add(3, 4)
7
>>>

If you are trying to unwrap a function from custom decorator, the decorator function needs to use wraps function from functools See discussion in Python Cookbook, 3rd edition, section 9.2 Preserving function metadata when writing decorators

>>> from functools import wraps
>>> def somedecorator(func):
...    @wraps(func)
...    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
...       # decorator implementation here
...       # ......
...       return func(*args, **kwargs)
...
...    return wrapper