Python: How to access test result variables from unittest module

Question

For a specific program I'm working in, we need to evaluate some code, then run a unittest, and then depending on whether or not the test failed, do A or B.

But the usual self.assertEqual(...) seems to display the results (fail, errors, success) instead of saving them somewhere, so I can't access that result. I have been checking the modules of unittest for days but I can't figure out where does the magic happen or if there is somewhere a variable I can call to know the result of the test without having to read the screen (making the program read and try to find the words "error" or "failed" doesn't sound like a good solution).

Answer 1

After some days of researching, I sent an email to [email protected] and got the perfect solution for my issue. The answer I got was:

I suspect that the reason that you're having trouble getting unittest to do that is that that's not the sort of thing that unittest was written to do. A hint that that's the case seems to me to be that over at the documentation:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html

there's a section on the command-line interface but nothing much about using the module as an imported module.

A bit of Googling yields this recipe:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578866-python-unittest-obtain-the-results-of-all-the-test/

Which looks as though it might be useful to you but I can't vouch for it and it seems to involve replacing one of the library's files. (Replacing one of the library's files is perfectly reasonable in my opinion. The point of Python's being open-source is that you can hack it for yourself.)

But if I were doing what you're describing, I'd probably write my own testing code. You could steal what you found useful from unittest (kind of the inverse of changing the library in place). Or you might find that your needs are sufficiently simple that a simple file of testing code was sufficient.

If none of that points to a solution, let us know what you get and I'll try to think some more.

Regards, Matt

After changing my result.py module from unittest, I'm able to access the value of the test (True, False, or Error).

Thank you very much, Matt.

P.S. I edited my question so it was more clear and didn't have unnecessary code.