


Strategies for Unit Testing and Integration Testing in Python
Jul 05, 2025 am 02:52 AMWriting good unit tests and integration tests is the key to ensuring the quality of Python projects. Unit testing starts from small things to verify whether the function behavior meets expectations. It is recommended that each function covers normal, boundary and exceptional situations, and use mock to isolate external dependencies; integration testing starts from the overall perspective to verify whether the collaboration between modules is smooth, and test clients and test data are commonly used to simulate real processes; test coverage should not blindly pursue high scores, but should pay attention to core logic and avoid formalism. Mastering these key points can effectively improve code stability and maintainability.
Writing good unit tests and integration tests is the key to ensuring the quality of Python projects. Many people initially think that testing is just a "double move", but once the project becomes larger and the logic becomes complex, the code without testing is like a time bomb. So the key is not how many tests to write, but how to write them effectively.

Unit testing: Start small and ensure the correct behavior of the function
The goal of unit testing is to verify that the behavior of the smallest unit is as expected, such as a function or method. Python has built-in unittest
framework, and more concise third-party libraries such as pytest
, which can be used to organize test cases.

Suggested practices:
- Each function has at least one test case covering normal input, boundary values ??and exceptions
- Use mock technology to isolate external dependencies (such as database calls, network requests)
- Try to keep the tests independent of order and run independently to avoid side effects affecting the results
For example, suppose you have a function that calculates the discount price:

def apply_discount(price, discount_rate): if price <= 0 or not (0 <= discount_rate <= 1): raise ValueError("Invalid input") return price * (1 - discount_rate)
The corresponding tests can include:
- Normal situation: 100 yuan off → 90 yuan
- Boundary situation: original price is 0 or discount rate is 0/1
- Exception: Incoming negative price or discount rate outside the range
Such tests can help you quickly discover potential problems when modifying function logic.
Integration testing: Starting from the overall perspective, ensure the modules are collaborative.
The focus of integration testing is not a single function, but whether the interaction between multiple components is smooth. For example, in a web application, the user login process may involve multiple links such as database query, token generation, API interface, etc. These require integration tests to verify whether the entire process is normal.
Common practices include:
- Use the test client to simulate real requests (such as Flask's
test_client()
or Django's test client) - Prepare test data (fixture) for initialization state
- Testing the complete business process is not only the interface return code, but also depends on whether the final status is correct.
For example, when testing the registration function, not only should you check that the API returns 200, but you should also confirm that a user record is really inserted into the database, and the email notification is also sent successfully.
These types of tests are usually slower than unit tests, but they can expose problems that "no problem alone but error when combined".
Test coverage: Don’t blindly pursue high scores, pay attention to core logic
Many teams will set coverage targets, such as 80%. But the numbers themselves are not important, the key is where they need to be covered.
Practical suggestions:
- The core business logic must cover comprehensively, such as order processing, payment process, etc.
- If the tool-like functions are simple and clear, the number of tests can be appropriately reduced.
- Don't write "formalist" tests to make up coverage, such as calling a function once without making assertions
You can use coverage.py
to analyze what code is covered by the current test, focusing on filling in the critical paths that are not covered.
Basically that's it. The more tests, the better, nor the faster, the better, but the better. The process of writing tests is actually an opportunity to re-examine the code structure. Many times you will find that the design is unreasonable, which promotes code optimization.
The above is the detailed content of Strategies for Unit Testing and Integration Testing in Python. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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