responses VS VCR.py

I use responses for this (for HTTP/HTTPS requests), to great affect. It's API is very nice. We have an API layer at work that's basically just a proxy to micro services, and responses is what we use to test it.

responses

Please format your code appropriately. But if you are using python requests you can use responses for mocking requests: https://github.com/getsentry/responses

You can use this https://github.com/getsentry/responses

The repsonses library is designed for mocking requests during tests https://github.com/getsentry/responses

I like using responses for mocking API calls in unit tests. It's easy to use and has less boilerplate than doing the mocks yourself. The bulk of your unit tests should be around any data transformation you do, and unit testing them should be fairly straightforward. I'd recommend writing integration tests as well, especially as IME the most common reason why data pipelines with API sources break is due to breaking API changes out of your control. I'd make them as high level as possible and make real API calls, preferably using credentials for a designated testing account. Assert the response from the API call conforms to the contract you expect. Additionally to integration test your code, you can test the main entrypoint to your script and make sure it spits out a file with the shape and contents you expect.

HTTP client library flexibility. Yes, requests pairs well with responses or requests-mock, and HTTPX has RESPX or pytest_httpx. Those testing helpers are an excellent match for the corresponding library, and should certainly be recommended. However, I don't always want to face the risk of rewriting all my tests if I replace the client library some day. And sometimes I am using an altogether different tool (even though both requests and HTTPX are quite awesome) such as urlopen, urllib3, httplib2, tornado, or aiohttp.

I made a library for this: https://github.com/kevin1024/vcrpy

Now it’s finally the time to discuss our last option. I have only found about it quite recently, frankly. I’ve been using mocks for a long time and always had some problem with them. VCR.py is a library that simplifies a lot the tests that make HTTP requests.

Unfortunately, VCR.py only supports a certain number of HTTP client libraries. Thankfully, some very popular implementations are included: the Python built-in urllib and http.client, as well as requests, urllib3, and aiohttp. And, while it may not be listed in the docs at the time of this writing, the changelog notes that HTTPX is also supported. Sadly, pycurl is not supported.

I don't normally work in Python, so I'm not used to writing mocks. You should be able to mock the client, but if that is too much you might look into something like VCR.py which records underlying HTTP interactions and then plays them back in further tests. (Make sure to redact any API keys from the cassettes though.)

https://betamax.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://github.com/kevin1024/vcrpy