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How to prevent nose (unittest) from using the docstring when verbosity >= 2

Date:  |  Tags: python  |  1 Comment

Some of our Python unit tests have docstrings. I find it annoying that, when using a verbosity level >= 2, nose prints the docstring instead of the class name and method name. Here's a hack to prevent it from doing that: Add a shortDescription() method to the test case class that returns None.

Here is an example of normal behavior:

import unittest

class MyTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_with_docstring(self):
        """Test that something does something
        """

    def test_without_docstring(self):
        pass

$ nosetests --verbosity=2 tmp.py
Test that something does something ... ok
test_without_docstring (tmp.MyTestCase) ... ok

Here is an example with the hack to prevent printing the docstring:

import unittest

class MyTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def shortDescription(self):
        return None

    def test_with_docstring(self):
        """Test that something does something
        """

    def test_without_docstring(self):
        pass

$ nosetests --verbosity=2 tmp.py
test_with_docstring (tmp.MyTestCase) ... ok
test_without_docstring (tmp.MyTestCase) ... ok

Comments


#1 Maresh commented on :

I did a small plugin for nosetests, this example inspired it. It avoids the boilerplate of having to write extra code. You can find it there: https://github.com/MarechJ/...

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