Unit Tests vs. Integration Tests

The world of testing has no shortage of terminology, and now that you know the difference between automated and manual testing, it’s time to go a level deeper.

Think of how you might test the lights on a car. You would turn on the lights (known as the test step) and go outside the car or ask a friend to check that the lights are on (known as the test assertion). Testing multiple components is known as integration testing.

Think of all the things that need to work correctly in order for a simple task to give the right result. These components are like the parts to your application, all of those classes, functions, and modules you’ve written.

A major challenge with integration testing is when an integration test doesn’t give the right result. It’s very hard to diagnose the issue without being able to isolate which part of the system is failing. If the lights didn’t turn on, then maybe the bulbs are broken. Is the battery dead? What about the alternator? Is the car’s computer failing?

If you have a fancy modern car, it will tell you when your light bulbs have gone. It does this using a form of unit test.

A unit test is a smaller test, one that checks that a single component operates in the right way. A unit test helps you to isolate what is broken in your application and fix it faster.

You have just seen two types of tests:

1. An integration test checks that components in your application operate with each other.
2. A unit test checks a small component in your application.

You can write both integration tests and unit tests in Python. To write a unit test for the built-in function sum(), you would check the output of sum() against a known output.

For example, here’s how you check that the sum() of the numbers (1, 2, 3) equals 6:

>>> assert sum([1, 2, 3]) == 6, "Should be 6"

This will not output anything on the REPL because the values are correct.

If the result from sum() is incorrect, this will fail with an AssertionError and the message "Should be 6". Try an assertion statement again with the wrong values to see an AssertionError:

>>> assert sum([1, 1, 1]) == 6, "Should be 6"

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError: Should be 6

In the REPL, you are seeing the raised AssertionError because the result of sum() does not match 6.

Instead of testing on the REPL, you’ll want to put this into a new Python file called test_sum.py and execute it again:

def test_sum():
    assert sum([1, 2, 3]) == 6, "Should be 6"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test_sum()
    print("Everything passed")

Now you have written a test case, an assertion, and an entry point (the command line). You can now execute this at the command line:

$ python test_sum.py
Everything passed

You can see the successful result, Everything passed.

In Python, sum() accepts any iterable as its first argument. You tested with a list. Now test with a tuple as well. Create a new file called test_sum_2.py with the following code:

def test_sum():
    assert sum([1, 2, 3]) == 6, "Should be 6"

def test_sum_tuple():
    assert sum((1, 2, 2)) == 6, "Should be 6"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test_sum()
    test_sum_tuple()
    print("Everything passed")

When you execute test_sum_2.py, the script will give an error because the sum() of (1, 2, 2) is 5, not 6. The result of the script gives you the error message, the line of code, and the traceback:

$ python test_sum_2.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test_sum_2.py", line 9, in <module>
    test_sum_tuple()
  File "test_sum_2.py", line 5, in test_sum_tuple
    assert sum((1, 2, 2)) == 6, "Should be 6"
AssertionError: Should be 6

Here you can see how a mistake in your code gives an error on the console with some information on where the error was and what the expected result was. Writing tests in this way is okay for a simple check, but what if more than one fails? This is where test runners come in. The test runner is a special application designed for running tests, checking the output, and giving you tools for debugging and diagnosing tests and applications.

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From Unit Tests vs. Integration Tests