Test discovery and analysis

When running as a Flake8 plugin, Flake8-AAA filters the Python code passed to it by Flake8. It finds code that looks like test code and then checks that code matches the AAA pattern. When all checks pass, then no error is raised.

Filtering

First, the filename is checked. It must either test.py, tests.py or start with test_. For those files that match, every function that has a name that starts with “test” is checked. This includes class methods.

Test functions and methods that contain only comments, docstrings or pass are skipped.

The aim of this process is to mirror Pytest’s default collection strategy as closely as possible. It also aims to work with popular testing tutorials such as Django’s Writing your first Django app which states:

Put the following in the tests.py file in the polls application

If you find that Flake8-AAA is giving false positives (you have checks that you expected to fail, but they did not), then you should check that the plugin did not ignore or skip those tests which you expected to fail.

Note

Flake8-AAA does not check doctests.

Processing

For each test found, Flake8-AAA runs the following processes, most of which can be found in Function.check_all().

Check for no-op

Skip test if it is considered “no-op” (pass, docstring, etc).

Mark blank lines

Mark all lines in the test that have no characters and are not part of a string. For example, the following snipped contains only one blank line (line 3 - in the middle of the list), the second at line 9 is part of a string and therefore not counted:

assert result == [
    1,

    2,
]
# Check on output
assert str(result) == """[
1,

2,
]"""

Mark comments

All lines that are # comment lines are marked.

# This line is considered a comment line

result = item.act()  # But not this line

This process relies on analysing the tokens that make up the test.

Find the Act block

There are four recognised types of Act block:

marked_act

Action is marked with Marked with # act comment:

do_thing()  # act

pytest_raises

Action is wrapped in pytest.raises context manager:

with pytest.raises(ValueError):
    do_thing()

result_assignment

result = action:

result = do_thing()

unittest_raises

Action is wrapped in unittest’s assertRaises context manager:

with self.assertRaises(ValueError):
    do_thing()

Flake8-AAA searches each test function for lines that look like Act blocks. It will raise an error when a function does not have exactly 1 Act block.

Build Arrange and Assert blocks

The Arrange block is created with all nodes in the test function that have a line number before the start of the Act block.

The Assert block is created with all nodes in the test function that have a line number after the end of the Act block.

Line-wise analysis

Finally a line-by-line analysis of the test function is carried out to ensure that:

• No blocks contain extra blank lines.
• There is a single blank line above and below the Act block.