Mocking a class: Mock() or patch()?

Question

mock.patch is a very very different critter than mock.Mock. patch replaces the class with a mock object and lets you work with the mock instance. Take a look at this snippet:

>>> class MyClass(object):
...   def __init__(self):
...     print 'Created MyClass@{0}'.format(id(self))
... 
>>> def create_instance():
...   return MyClass()
... 
>>> x = create_instance()
Created MyClass@4299548304
>>> 
>>> @mock.patch('__main__.MyClass')
... def create_instance2(MyClass):
...   MyClass.return_value = 'foo'
...   return create_instance()
... 
>>> i = create_instance2()
>>> i
'foo'
>>> def create_instance():
...   print MyClass
...   return MyClass()
...
>>> create_instance2()
<mock.Mock object at 0x100505d90>
'foo'
>>> create_instance()
<class '__main__.MyClass'>
Created MyClass@4300234128
<__main__.MyClass object at 0x100505d90>

patch replaces MyClass in a way that allows you to control the usage of the class in functions that you call. Once you patch a class, references to the class are completely replaced by the mock instance.

mock.patch is usually used when you are testing something that creates a new instance of a class inside of the test. mock.Mock instances are clearer and are preferred. If your self.sut.something method created an instance of MyClass instead of receiving an instance as a parameter, then mock.patch would be appropriate here.

I've got a YouTube video on this.

Short answer: Use mock when you're passing in the thing that you want mocked, and patch if you're not. Of the two, mock is strongly preferred because it means you're writing code with proper dependency injection.

Silly example:

# Use a mock to test this.
my_custom_tweeter(twitter_api, sentence):
    sentence.replace('cks','x')   # We're cool and hip.
    twitter_api.send(sentence)

# Use a patch to mock out twitter_api. You have to patch the Twitter() module/class 
# and have it return a mock. Much uglier, but sometimes necessary.
my_badly_written_tweeter(sentence):
    twitter_api = Twitter(user="XXX", password="YYY")
    sentence.replace('cks','x') 
    twitter_api.send(sentence)

Key points which explain difference and provide guidance upon working with unittest.mock

1. Use Mock if you want to replace some interface elements(passing args) of the object under test
2. Use patch if you want to replace internal call to some objects and imported modules of the object under test
3. Always provide spec from the object you are mocking
   • With patch you can always provide autospec
   • With Mock you can provide spec
   • Instead of Mock, you can use create_autospec, which intended to create Mock objects with specification.

In the question above the right answer would be to use Mock, or to be more precise create_autospec (because it will add spec to the mock methods of the class you are mocking), the defined spec on the mock will be helpful in case of an attempt to call method of the class which doesn't exists ( regardless signature), please see some

from unittest import TestCase
from unittest.mock import Mock, create_autospec, patch


class MyClass:
    
    @staticmethod
    def method(foo, bar):
        print(foo)


def something(some_class: MyClass):
    arg = 1
    # Would fail becuase of wrong parameters passed to methd.
    return some_class.method(arg)


def second(some_class: MyClass):
    arg = 1
    return some_class.unexisted_method(arg)


class TestSomethingTestCase(TestCase):
    def test_something_with_autospec(self):
        mock = create_autospec(MyClass)
        mock.method.return_value = True
        # Fails because of signature misuse.
        result = something(mock)
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.method.called)
    
    def test_something(self):
        mock = Mock()  # Note that Mock(spec=MyClass) will also pass, because signatures of mock don't have spec.
        mock.method.return_value = True
        
        result = something(mock)
        
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.method.called)
        
    def test_second_with_patch_autospec(self):
        with patch(f'{__name__}.MyClass', autospec=True) as mock:
            # Fails because of signature misuse.
            result = second(mock)
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.unexisted_method.called)


class TestSecondTestCase(TestCase):
    def test_second_with_autospec(self):
        mock = Mock(spec=MyClass)
        # Fails because of signature misuse.
        result = second(mock)
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.unexisted_method.called)
    
    def test_second_with_patch_autospec(self):
        with patch(f'{__name__}.MyClass', autospec=True) as mock:
            # Fails because of signature misuse.
            result = second(mock)
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.unexisted_method.called)
    
    def test_second(self):
        mock = Mock()
        mock.unexisted_method.return_value = True
        
        result = second(mock)
        
        self.assertTrue(result)
        self.assertTrue(mock.unexisted_method.called)

The test cases with defined spec used fail because methods called from something and second functions aren't complaint with MyClass, which means - they catch bugs, whereas default Mock will display.

As a side note there is one more option: use patch.object to mock just the class method which is called with.

The good use cases for patch would be the case when the class is used as inner part of function:

def something():
    arg = 1
    return MyClass.method(arg)

Then you will want to use patch as a decorator to mock the MyClass.