Mocks, fakes, dummies, stubs and spies: Successfully isolating the snake

This session, which will review test isolation concepts and the unittest.mock module, is structured in a way that both beginners and intermediate developers will learn from it. A basic knowledge of testing is recommended. Intermediate developers will leave the room with a clear understanding of the tools - further than just using simple mocks - to successfully fake dependencies. Multiple “not so well known” features of unittest.mock will be presented so we can shape those objects to behave functionally different.

Unittest.mock is an extremely useful library which is commonly underused, this talk aims to bring clarity into stubbing in general and into medium/advanced mock features to ease and remove pain when users work with it.