errors

Like all other helper functions in FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server, we also need to test the exception and error helper functions and classes. The error helper classes are mainly used to create error handler responses for known errors. For example we know error 403 is Access Forbidden, but we want to send a proper source message along with a proper error message to help identify and handle the error, hence we use the error classes. To ensure that future commits do not mismatch the error, we implemented the unit tests for errors.

There are mainly two kind of error classes, one are HTTP status errors and the other are the exceptions. Depending on the type of error we get in the try-except block for a particular API, we raise that particular exception or error.

Unit Test for Exception

Exceptions are written in this form:

@validates_schema
    def validate_quantity(self, data):
        if 'max_order' in data and 'min_order' in data:
            if data['max_order'] < data['min_order']:
                raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/max-order'},
                                          "max-order should be greater than min-order")

This error is raised wherever the data that is sent as POST or PATCH is unprocessable. For example, this is how we raise this error:

raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/min-quantity'},

           "min-quantity should be less than max-quantity")

This exception is raised due to error in validation of data where maximum quantity should be more than minimum quantity.

To test that the above line indeed raises an exception of UnprocessableEntity with status 422, we use the assertRaises() function. Following is the code:

 def test_exceptions(self):
        # Unprocessable Entity Exception
        with self.assertRaises(UnprocessableEntity):
            raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/min-quantity'},
                                      "min-quantity should be less than max-quantity")

In the above code, with self.assertRaises() creates a context of exception type, so that when the next line raises an exception, it asserts that the exception that it was expecting is same as the exception raised and hence ensures that the correct exception is being raised

Unit Test for Error

In error helper classes, what we do is, for known HTTP status codes we return a response that is user readable and understandable. So this is how we raise an error:

ForbiddenError({'source': ''}, 'Super admin access is required')

This is basically the 403: Access Denied error. But with the “Super admin access is required” message it becomes far more clear. However we need to ensure that status code returned when this error message is shown still stays 403 and isn’t modified in future unwantedly.

Here, errors and exceptions work a little different. When we declare a custom error class, we don’t really raise that error. Instead we show that error as a response. So we can’t use the assertRaises() function. However what we can do is we can compare the status code and ensure that the error raised is the same as the expected one. So we do this:

def test_errors(self):
        with app.test_request_context():
            # Forbidden Error
            forbidden_error = ForbiddenError({'source': ''}, 'Super admin access is required')
            self.assertEqual(forbidden_error.status, 403)

            # Not Found Error
            not_found_error = NotFoundError({'source': ''}, 'Object not found.')
            self.assertEqual(not_found_error.status, 404)

Here we firstly create an object of the error class ForbiddenError with a sample source and message. We then assert that the status attribute of this object is 403 which ensures that this error is of the Access Denied type using the assertEqual() function, which is what was expected.
The above helps us maintain that no one in future unknowingly or by mistake changes the error messages and status code so as to maintain the HTTP status codes in the response.

Resources:

• Learn about the whole python unittest library, assertEqual() and  assertRaises() functions: https://docs.python.org/2/library/unittest.html
• How to upgrade assertRaises() functions for error (by Trent Mick): http://code.activestate.com/recipes/307970-a-better-assertraises-for-unittestpy/
• Learn about Python exception handling (by Dough Hellman): https://doughellmann.com/blog/2009/06/19/python-exception-handling-techniques/