Tests for Basic Python Data Structure Interfaces

Question

A fairly small question: does anyone know about a pre-made suite of Python unit tests that just check if a class conforms to one of the standard Python data structure interfaces (e.g., lists, sets, dictionaries, queues, etc). It's not overly hard to write them, but I'd hate to bother doing so if someone has already done this. It seems like very basic functionality that someone has probably done already.

The use case is that I am using a factory pattern to create data structures due to different restrictions related to platforms. As such, I need to be able to test that the resulting created objects still conform to the standard interfaces on the surface. Also, I should note that by "conform" I mean that the tests should check not just that the interface functions exist, but also check that they work (e.g., can set and retrieve a value in a map, for instance). Python 2.7 tests would be preferred.

Answer 1

First, "the standard Python data structure interfaces" are not lists, sets, dictionaries, queues, etc. Those are specific implementations of the interfaces. (And queue isn't even a data structure in the sense you're thinking of—its salient features are that its operations are atomic, and put and get optionally synchronize on a Condition, and so on.)

Anyway, the interfaces are defined in five different not-quite-compatible ways.

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The Built-in Types section of the documentation describes what it means to be an iterator type, a sequence type, etc. However, these are not nearly as rigorous as you'd expect for reference documentation (at least if you're used to, say, C++ or Java).

I'm not aware of any tests for such a thing, so I think you'd have to build them from scratch.

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The collections module contains Collections Abstract Base Classes that define the interfaces, and provide a way to register "virtual subclasses" via the abc module. So, you can declare "I am a mapping" by inheriting from collections.Mapping, or calling collections.Mapping.register. But that doesn't actually prove that you are a mapping, just that you're claiming to be. (If you inherit from Mapping, it also acts as a mixin that helps you complete the interface by implementing, e.g., __contains__ on top of __getitem__.)

If you want to test the ABC meaning, defuz's answer is very close, and with a little more work I think he or someone else can complete it.

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The CPython C API defines an Abstract Objects Layer. While this is not actually authoritative for the language, it's obviously intended that the C-API protocols and the language-level interfaces are supposed to match. And, unlike the latter, the former are rigorously defined. And of course the source code from CPython 2.7, and maybe other implementations like PyPy, may help.

There are tests for this that come with CPython, but really, they're for testing that calling PyMapping_GetItem from C properly calls your mymapping.__getitem__ in Python, which is really at a tangent to what you want to test, so I don't think it will help much.

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The actual concrete classes have additional interface on top of the protocols, that you may want to test, but that's harder to describe. In particular, the way the __new__ and __init__ methods work is often important. Implementing the Mapping protocol means someone can construct an empty Foo instance and add items to it with foo[key] = value, but it doesn't mean someone can construct Foo(key=value), or Foo({key: value}) or Foo([(key, value)]).

And for this case, there are existing tests that come with all of the standard Python implementations. CPython comes with a very extensive test suite that includes things like test_dict.py. PyPy runs all the (Python-level) CPython tests, and some extra ones besides.

You will obviously have to modify these tests to run on an arbitrary class instead of one hardcoded into the tests, and you may also have to modify them to handle whichever definition you pick. Plus, they probably test more than you asked for. You just want to know if a class conforms to the protocol, not whether its methods do the right thing, right? But still, I think they're a good starting point.

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Finally, the C API defines a Concrete Objects Layer that, although it's not authoritative, matches the previous definition and is more rigorously defined.

Unfortunately, the tests for this one are definitely not going to be very useful to you, because they're checking things like whether PyDict_Check and PyDict_GetItem work on your class, which they will not for any mapping defined in pure Python.

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If you do build something complete for any of these definitions, I would strongly suggest putting it on PyPI, and posting about it to python-list, so you get feedback (and bug reports).