Sardana Testing

Sardana Test Framework

A testing framework allowing to test the Sardana features is included with the Sardana distribution. It is useful for test-driven development and it allows to find bugs in the code.

The first implementation of the Framework is an outcome of the Sardana Enhancement Proposal 5 (SEP5).

Ideally, whenever possible, bug reports should be accompanied by a test revealing the bug.

The first tests implemented are focused on Unit Tests, but the same framework should be used for integration and system tests as well.

The following are some key points to keep in mind when using this framework:

  • Most of the tests in the Sardana Test Framework use unittest. Since Sardana 3.0.2 we decided to move to pytest and we plan to gradually migrate the already existing tests.

  • All test-related code is contained in submodules named test which appear in any module of Sardana.

  • Test related code falls in one of these three categories:

    • Actual test code (classes that derive from unittest.TestCase)

    • Utility classes/functions (code to simplify development of test code)

    • Resources (accessory files required by some test). They are located in subdirectories named res situated inside the folders named test.

For a more complete description of the conventions on how to write tests with the Sardana Testing Framework, please refer to the [SEP5](http://sourceforge.net/p/sardana/wiki/SEP5/).

Sardana Test Framework for testing macros

Sardana Test Framework provides tools for testing macros. These tools come from sardana.macroserver.macros.test module

Tests meant to be incorporated in the Sardana distribution must be portable. For this reason it is strongly encouraged to use only elements created by the sar_demo macro. Only in the case where this is not possible, one may create specific elements for a test; these elements must be removed at the end of the test execution (e.g. using the tearDown method).

The module sardana.macroserver.macros.test provides utilities to simplify the tests for macro execution and macro stop. Macro test classes can inherit from RunMacroTestCase, RunStopMacroTestCase or BaseMacroTestCase.

Another utility provided is the option to execute the same test with many different macro input parameters. This is done by decorating the test class with any of the decorators of the the macro tests family.

This decorator is provided by sardana.macroserver.macros.test.

Specificities:

  • Macros such as ‘lsm’ inherit from RunMacroTestCase as it is interesting to test if the macros can be executed. Helper methods ( such as RunMacroTestCase.macro_runs() ) can be overriden when programming new test cases. New helpers can be created as well.

  • Scan macros inherits from RunStopMacroTestCase as it is interesting to test both: if the macros can be executed and if they can be aborted.

Testing controller plugins

For developing controller tests refer to How to test controller plugins.