VCR.py VS pytest-describe

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

I've found pytest to encourage tests with really long method names, examples from the post:

* test_refresh_failure

* test_refresh_with_timeout

These get even longer like test_refresh_with_timeout_when_username_is_not_found for example.

pytest-describe allows for a much nicer testing syntax. There's a great comparison here: https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest-describe#why-bother

TL;DR, this is nicer:

def describe_my_function():

    def with_default_arguments():