Testing in python can be fun too!

May 29, 2013May 30, 2013 Leandro Moreira python, tdd, tests

Humble beginning

I come from (lately) Ruby, Java and Clojure and currently I’m working with some python projects and I was missing the way I used to test my code ~~with rspec~~. After a quick research, I found three great projects that helps to make more readable tests, they are: py.test, Mock and sure.

Better assertions

I was missing a better way to make asserts into my tests. The option about using the plain assert is good but not enough and by using sure I could do some awesome code ~~looking similar to rspec~~.

#instead of plain old assert
assert add(1, 4) == 5
#I'm empowered by
add(1, 4).should.be.equals(5)
[].should.be.empty
['chip8', 'schip8', 'chip16'].shouldnt.be.empty
[1, 2, 3, 4].should.have.length_of(4)

And this makes all the difference, my test code now is more expressive.

Struggling with monkeypatch

The other challenge I was facing was to understand and use monkeypatch for mocks and stubs. I find easier to use the Mock library even though its @patch looks similar to monkeypatch but I could grasp it quickly.

#Stubing
def test_simple_math_remotely_stubed():
  server = Mock()
  server.computes_add = Mock(return_value=3)

  add_remotely(1, 2, server).should.be.equals(3)

#Mocking
def test_simple_math_remotely_mocked():
  server = Mock()

  add_remotely(1, 2, server)

  server.computes_add.assert_called_once_with(1, 2)

#Stubing an internal dependency
@patch('cmath.nasa.random')
def test_simple_math_with_randon_generated_by_nasa(nasa_random_generator):
  nasa_random_generator.configure_mock(return_value=42)

  add_and_sum_with_rnd(3, 9).should.be.equals(54)

#Mocking an internal dependency
@patch('cmath.mailer.send')
def test_simple_math_that_sends_email(mailer_mock):
  add_and_sends_email(3, 9)

  mailer_mock.assert_called_once_with(
          to='master@math.com',
          subject='Complex addition',
          body='The result was 12')

Make sure you

Are using virtualenv for better lib version managment
Have installed pytest, sure and mock
Git cloned the project above to understand it.

Redundancy and failover on your life

May 19, 2013 Leandro Moreira distributed systems, high scalability

Very simplified introduction: failover is the ability to keep using a service or device in case it fails, and you usually achieve that by having redundancy, having more than one service or device at time. A silly example could be when the power goes off in your house, you can handle that (failover) by having and using a flashlight (redundancy) as backup light system.

In my life I faced similar problems all the time and I think it is valid to share that. I’ll start with the very basic service (but currently very necessary) Internet, suppose we’re not at home or we’re travelling or our beloved ISP is off, I deal with that by having an extra 3G modem and Kindle with 3G free-worldwide.

I travel quite often and ~~everytime~~ sometimes I face issues with outlets. My notebook is meant to be used on Brazil outlet pattern but when I go to US I need to use an outlet adapter. It is not a very accurate failover mechanism however travelling with one world outlet adapter can save you from some pain.

The main way I have fun is by playing games; then in case of my console broke or the power went out I have the portable, again it’s not quite accurate a failover mechanism but for my purpose it is.

Another area is TV, suppose my TV was stealed I can keep watching it by using my usb tv or even my gps tv.

Going to digital world I can tell you endless stories and ways to have failover. The most obvious could be have your files in your computer but keep it also in a cloud storage. I love this thing about digital buying, I used to buy games digitally (Steam, eShop, PSN) and even though I change computer I don’t need dirty old DVD’S to recovery my games, they are all associated with my account.

These last two are the best IMHO: make all the documents you have digital copy (this is easy today since any smartphone can take pictures), try to attached them to cloud (email, storage…), it saved me a lot of time. You should have at least two phone numbers of a service (food delivery, cab, hospital and etc.) because sometimes you don’t have easy access to get this info.

And you, what do you do to have failover in your life?

Clojure session #01

June 17, 2012September 18, 2019 Leandro Moreira clojure

Since I’m not posting nothing here lately, I’ve decided to write some thoughts and examples with some subject, this time is Clojure.

Multiple arities

(defn sum
"sum given numbers"
([] 0)
([x] (+ x))
([x y] (+ x y)))

Undefined number of arguments

(defn sum [& all] (reduce + all))

Local bindings

This can help you to bind some values and let your code more readable

(let [x 2] (+ x 2)) ; x only exists within let context

doing sides effects (maybe you can see this like blocks)

(do
(println "hey")
(def a (read))
(println " you typed " a))

Closures in clojure

(defn validnumber? [max] #(if (> % max) false true))
; or (defn validnumber? [max] (fn [number] (if (> number max) false true)))

(def bellow100? (validnumber? 100))

(bellow100? 9) ; true
(bellow100? 200) ; false

Curying

(def plus-one (partial + 1))
(plus-one 2)

Compose functions

(def composed (comp #(+ 2 %) +))
(composed 1 2)

Thrush operators ( -> and ->> )

-> data flow (in front) among functions
->> data flow (after) among functions

(-> 4 (- 2) (- 2))
;translates to
(- 4 2) (- 2) => (- 2 2) => 0

(->> 4 (- 2) (- 2))
;translates to
(- 2 4) (- 2) => (- 2 -2) => 4

another good usage for ->

(def person {:name "name" :age 120 :location { :country "US" } })
;instead of (:country (:location person)) a more readable way could be
(-> person :location :country)

PS: hardly based on good book Pratical Clojure

Will we only create and use dynamic languages in the future?

January 7, 2012January 7, 2012 Leandro Moreira clojure, developer, functional, java, object-oriented programming, ruby, tdd, tests

Since I’ve playing with some dynamic languages (Ruby and Clojure), I have been thinking about why would anybody create a new static typed language?! And I didn’t get the answer.

I started programming in Visual Basic and I taste its roots, which are almost all full of procedure commands (bunch of do, goto and end), then I moved to C#, sharper it changes the end’s for }’s and give us a little more power based on some premises: we can treat two different things in the same way, polymorphism. The last static language, but not the least, I used (and I use it) Java, abusing of his new way of treating a set of things equality, the interfaces and using its “powers” on reflections.

Although when I started to use Ruby I saw that I could treat a group of things equality without doing any extra work. I still need to code models and composed types, even though we can create or change them dynamically using “real power” of metaprogramming.

When I start to study and apply the Clojure and its principles, my first reaction was the rejection, how can I go on without my formal objects, how can I design software without a model in the head and so on. I wasn’t thinking about how actually I do software, currently I use TDD to design software and I don’t think what models I need to have, I do think in terms of “what I want”. At minimum, Clojure make me think about, do we really need object to design software?! . A three days ago I saw an amazing video about similar thoughts: Some thoughts on Ruby after 18 months of Clojure.

Summarising: With my limited knowledge of theses languages, let’s suppose we use a function (which we don’t have source code) and we want to do something before that function is executed (intercept) using: VB I’ll need to check every single piece of code which we call this function and call another one, in Java we can use a AOP framework, in Ruby we can use the spells of metaprogramming. It seems that some frameworks, patterns and extra work aren’t needed more because of this dynamic language evolution.

My conclusions using dynamic languages (Clojure/Ruby) for now it’s: I write less code and reuse them more easy, so I don’t see any reason to create/use a new static typed language, would you see any motivation to do that?

PS: When I use C# (.Net Framework 1.3 – 2.0) it was not so super cool as today.

Clojure resources

November 29, 2011June 17, 2012 Leandro Moreira clojure, distributed systems, functional, java, leiningen, tests

Always that I start to learn a new language, I promise to keep the best resources links I found, but it never works. This post suppose to be updated often. Any broken link or suggestion, just comment and I’ll try to fix, add or remove it.

Links, tutorials, guides, documentations, screencasts and etc.