python unittest assertRaises

Question

I copied this verbatim from python.org unittest documentation:

import random
import unittest

class TestSequenceFunctions(unittest.TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        self.seq = range(10)

    def test_shuffle(self):
        # make sure the shuffled sequence does not lose any elements
        random.shuffle(self.seq)
        self.seq.sort()
        self.assertEqual(self.seq, range(10))

        # should raise an exception for an immutable sequence
        self.assertRaises(TypeError, random.shuffle, (1,2,3))

    def test_choice(self):
        element = random.choice(self.seq)
        self.assertTrue(element in self.seq)

    def test_sample(self):
        with self.assertRaises(ValueError):
            random.sample(self.seq, 20)
        for element in random.sample(self.seq, 5):
            self.assertTrue(element in self.seq)

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

But I get this error message from python 2.7.2 [GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-51)] on linux2:

.E.
======================================================================
ERROR: test_sample (__main__.TestSequenceFunctions)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "tmp.py", line 23, in test_sample
    with self.assertRaises(ValueError):
TypeError: failUnlessRaises() takes at least 3 arguments (2 given)

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.001s

FAILED (errors=1)

How can I get assertRaises() to work properly?

Answer 1

If you're using 2.7 and still seeing this issue, it could be because you're not using python's unittest module. Some other modules like twisted provide assertRaises and though they try to maintain compatibility with python's unittest, your particular version of that module may be out of date.