Testing Asynchronous Code with Aiohttp Test Utilities

The aiohttp library in Python provides useful utilities for testing asynchronous code. Writing automated tests ensures code works as expected and catches issues early. This enables rapid development while maintaining quality.

When working with aiohttp specifically for web APIs or applications, it's important to test all request handling code and routes. The aiohttp.test_utils module contains helper classes to simplify testing aiohttp based projects.

Key Components for Testing

The main test class is AioHTTPTestCase - it handles creating an event loop, aiohttp client session, and test server/application for each test. Subclass this and override the get_app() method to return your aiohttp application.

from aiohttp.test_utils import AioHTTPTestCase

class MyAppTestCase(AioHTTPTestCase):

    async def get_app(self):
        app = web.Application()
        # register routes
        return app

The test case instance provides a self.client session to make requests to the app, very similar to how requests work outside of testing.

async def test_index(self):
    resp = await self.client.request("GET", "/")
    assert resp.status == 200

Tips and Tricks

Key Takeaways

The aiohttp.test_utils module offers a full-featured way to test aiohttp web apps and APIs. Subclassing AioHTTPTestCase and using the client provides an ergonomic API similar to making real requests. Follow these patterns to enable comprehensive testing of asynchronous Python code.