missing required positional argument - nosetests

Question

I am just trying to execute one simple testcase list below,

# testinheritence.py

import unittest

class heleClass(object):
    def execute_test_plan(self, test_plan):
        self.assertEqual("a", "a")


class TestParent(heleClass):
    def testName(self):
        test_plan = {"a": 1}
        self.execute_test_plan(test_plan)


class SqlInheritance(unittest.TestCase, TestParent):
    print ("get into inheritance")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

And then test it with this command: "nosetests3 -s testinheritence.py" but I encounter these exception persistently, it complains,

======================================================================
ERROR: testinheritence.TestParent.execute_test_plan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/nose/case.py", line 198, in runTest
    self.test(*self.arg)
TypeError: execute_test_plan() missing 1 required positional argument: 'test_plan'

======================================================================
ERROR: testinheritence.TestParent.testName
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/nose/case.py", line 198, in runTest
    self.test(*self.arg)
  File "/home/dave/scripts/testinheritence.py", line 16, in testName
    self.execute_test_plan(test_plan)
  File "/home/dave/scripts/testinheritence.py", line 10, in execute_test_plan
    self.assertEqual("a", "a")
AttributeError: 'TestParent' object has no attribute 'assertEqual'

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 4 tests in 0.003s

Run it with "python -m unittest testinheritence", the testcase will pass successfully, I googled this but haven't got an approache to fix it, is there anything i missed here? any response is highly apprecaited!

Answer 1

You have several issues here. Your heleClass is not a proper unittest class (you used object as your parent. As result it has no self.assertEqual() method. Furthermore, nose thinks that "execute_test_plan" is a test, and calls it as part of test, and it fails, because it needs an argument. Try marking execute_test_plan as @nottest:

import unittest
from nose.tools import nottest

class heleClass(unittest.TestCase):
    @nottest
    def execute_test_plan(self, test_plan):
        self.assertEqual("a", "a")


class TestParent(heleClass):
    def testName(self):
        test_plan = {"a": 1}
        self.execute_test_plan(test_plan)        

if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

Answer 2

nose will also complain if you move the test helper method to a top level function in the test module.

I was able to get around this by making the function private, by changing the name to start with _, in the test module. Then nose will ignore it.