Overview

This individual deliverable is focused on assessing your ability to write tests in Python using the ‘unittest’ module. You will write tests for the Silly Dataset, however the skills you will practice and demonstrate in this deliverable will be used in the command-line component of your team project.

Collaboration

You should work individually on this deliverable. You can get conceptual help from your team and others, however what you submit must be all your own work.

Due Date

The individual deliverable 1 is due Monday Sept 25th at 10pm on your individual GitHub.

Your Task

You should write several tests for the Basic Command Line App specified below. Remember that tests should follow the same design and style principles as production code. You should use the starter structure provided in the Git Classroom Individual Deliverable 1 assignment. You should refer to the TDD lab for tips.

Your tests should be in the Tests subdirectory. The grader will assess your tests by placing the app code in the ProductionCode subdirectory and then running python3 -m unittest discover -s Tests from the top-level of your project folder.

Specification

The app has the following functions with these exact signatures:

load_data()
'''Arguments: None
Return value: None
Purpose: Loads the data from a file'''

get_cell(row, column)
'''Arguments: row (int), column (int)
Return value: the value at that cell
Purpose: get the value at a specified cell
Raises: IndexError if row or column outside of bounds'''

get_row_titles()
'''Arguments: None
Return: List of row titles
Purpose: Get a list of the row titles
'''

get_row_by_title(title)
'''Arguments: title (string)
Return value: list of values of a row based on the title (yes, a row, not a column as you would expect :) ); if row title isn't in table, returns empty list
Purpose: to get a row based on the first value in that row
'''

get_silly()
'''Arguments: None
Return value: 2
Purpose: just a simple silly method
'''

main()
'''Arguments: None
Return value: None
Purpose: Maintains command line interface, loads data. Usage statement: "Usage: python3 basic_cl.py row column". Prints cell value specified.
'''

Turning it in

You should submit the file(s) with the tests that you wrote to the Individual Deliverable 1 repository.

You shouldn’t include any production code; the grader will place my production code into the correct folder.

Evaluation

The criteria for “Demonstrates Proficiency” and “Demonstrates Mastery” are below.

Proficiency

  • Functionality:
    • The tests all pass
    • The directory structure and filenames are as specified
    • The tests run with production code that has the signature specified above
    • There is one basic unit test for each of the get methods (4 tests total)
  • Design:
    • Test code is reasonably easy to read and understand
    • There isn’t an excessive amount of repeated code
    • Tests have docstrings describing what they are testing

Mastery

  • All the Proficiency criteria are met
  • Functionality:
    • One basic unit test for the command line method main
    • At least one edge case for get_row_by_title, get_cell, and main (docstring should mention they are edge cases and make clear what edge they are testing)
  • Design:
    • The test code is very clear, potentially using helper functions to ensure that test functions are at a single layer of abstraction
    • There is barely any duplicated code
    • Style mostly follows the style guide

Addendums

You weren’t required to do this for the first submission, but if you are submitting a revision, you need to add these things (they should have been specified originally, but I forgot!):

  • You should make a Tests directory that you put your tests in
  • You should add the following method to the top of (each of) your test class(es), which makes sure that the data is loaded before each test is run: 
    def setUp(self):
  load_data()
  • Make sure that you are importing the production code correctly, it imports the same as the TDD lab describes
  • Check your Feedback PR to see why your tests failed
  • Remember to set the correct location for basic_cl.py when writing the main tests (i.e. it’s in ProductionCode, so the path is ProductionCode/basic_cl.py)
  • When invalid indices are given as command line arguments, main prints the usage statement
  • Remember that Python will not throw an error if you do my_list[-1]
  • Remember to cite your sources if you use outside resources

Questions

Here are questions that have previously come up about this assignment:

  • Does load_data need a test?

No, load_data doesn’t need a specific test.

  • Are the column headers included in the data?

Yes, the column headers are row 0 of the data and can be accessed as such.

  • Is the data 0-indexed or 1-indexed?

Even though the data values are 1-indexed, you should still use Python’s typical 0-indexing. The data is just being read into a nested list; nothing fancy!

  • At least one edge case should be for invalid input