I've recently had the pleasure of reading "Python Testing: An easy and convenient approach to testing your python projects" from Packt Publishing. It's been a quick read but a solid set of instructions on the different methods for the subject. The book starts out very quickly with details about the various methods that are available, the means of automation for testing, and of course the environment you'd want to be in for working on the subjects that the book covers. It then, in the second chapter, moves into the guts of testing by describing the basics of doctest via syntax and some simple examples, and then moves on to a real world example via the AVL tree. It's all very basic testing until chapter three where the author gets into unit testing, which is probably the most useful method in my opinion, and he goes to prove it's usefulness with examples of it's use in different parts and stages of the development process. Later in the book the python mocker is used to separate unit sections, and then the actual unittest framework is discussed with more examples and a enough details that if you don't understand it by then, you may never. By chapter six we are into the Nose app that drives the unittest, which is very useful of course. The most useful part of the book comes toward the end where the author discusses and the walks through the method used to create a test-driven application and then even shows examples via the whole chapter dedicated towards making a testable web application frontend. Very impressive for such a quick read. Integration testing and System testing is also covered, thankfully. The final chapter covers some useful tools and techniques of which I particularly enjoyed the section on version control hooks. If you are not using version control in your development process you need to start now, as such the hooks for integration with the test framework are rather useful to know. Overall this is a very nice book that discusses python application testing from the ground up. It's perfect for a beginner or an intermediate python programmer that has little to no experience in automated testing methods. More advanced programmers that have already used these methods will probably not find the book too useful except for the last chapter that covers extra tools and techniques that they might not have seen before. If I didn't have this book and needed to learn about python testing, it would be my first choice and my only recommendation so far. Well written and very useful. If there is one thing I do not like about the book, it would be the reliance on the python CLI for running commands. I am a CLI kind of person and I keep lots of terminals open at the same time, so I prefer to write my code in an editor or IDE in one term tab, then switch to another and execute the script; I do not use the python command line to do much of anything. So following some of the steps in the book require that you follow the CLI method and that gets old for me. It's a personal preference but one worth noting as there is a lot of it in the book. That's the only thing I did not enjoy in a book that was otherwise basically perfect for the subject. Annotation Automated testing moves much of the labor of testing off the developer and makes it easier as well as quicker to find bugs and fix them. Automated tests run faster, increase test coverage, and lower costs. However, testing is neither an easy process nor remotely exciting for most developers. But with the right techniques and tools, testing can become a simple and gratifying part of the development process. With this helpful guide _ from an expert _ in your hand, testing will not be a tiresome topic for you anymore. You will learn how to test your Python projects in the easiest way, making other parts of the development process easier and more enjoyable. This book covers the tools and techniques of automated testing and test-driven development. Starting from the very basics, the chapters introduce new tools and techniques in simple, accessible language with step-by-step examples. You will explore how to make testing easier and more accurate with Python's doctest module and learn test-driven development using the unittest framework. You will also learn how to keep your units separate from each other and discover a simple and easy way to integrate Mocker and unittest. Next, we cover integration testing and web application testing. Automated testing gives developers better feedback, faster and more often. Bugs get found sooner and fixed better, with less effort. By the end of this book, you will have all of the skills needed to benefit from automated testing The book begins with the very foundations of automated testing, and expands on them until the best-practice tools and techniques are fully covered. New concepts are illustrated with step-by-step hands-on exercises. Testing will be easier and more enjoyable with this beginner's guide. If you are a Python developer and want to write tests for your applications, this book will get you started and show you the easiest way to learn testing. You need to have sound Python programming knowledge to follow along. An awareness of software testing would be good, but no formal knowledge of testing is expected nor do you need to have any knowledge of the libraries discussed in the book.
