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I used to have some testing code for mocking a simple directory structure when working with pathlib. I recently tried to run these tests to learn that some of the internals in pathlib have changed ...
#1: Initial revision
How to mock methods like `pathlib.Path.is_dir`?
I used to have some testing code for mocking a simple directory structure when working with `pathlib`. I recently tried to run these tests to learn that some of the internals in `pathlib` have changed in recent Python versions, breaking my mocking setup. I managed to resolve some of the issues already, but I got stuck on an issue that feels like it shouldn't be one. Concretely, I have been mocking `pathlib.Path.is_dir` as follows: ```python from pathlib import Path from unittest import mock some_path = Path("/some/path/") with mock.patch("pathlib.Path.is_dir") as m_is_dir: m_is_dir.side_effect = lambda p: p.name == "" print(Path.is_dir(some_path)) # this is just a placeholder ``` Now, the problem is that the code in newer Python versions (internally) seems to be using `some_path.is_dir()` instead. As a result, I get a `TypeError` about a missing positional argument `p` for my lambda expression. This can be simulated by the following code ```python with mock.patch("pathlib.Path.is_dir") as m_is_dir: m_is_dir.side_effect = lambda p: p.name == "" print(some_path.is_dir()) # this is just a placeholder ``` This can be fixed by rewriting the mocking function ```python with mock.patch("pathlib.Path.is_dir") as m_is_dir: m_is_dir.side_effect = lambda: some_path.name == "" print(some_path.is_dir()) # this is just a placeholder ``` but of course that breaks the tests for the older versions again. I have tried to patch `some_path.is_dir` directly, using ```python with mock.patch("pathlib.Path.is_dir") as m_is_dir: m_is_dir.side_effect = lambda p: p.name == "" some_path.is_dir = lambda: m_is_dir(some_path) print(some_path.is_dir()) # this is just a placeholder ``` but that resulted in an `AttributeError` because `is_dir` is read-only. I actually would have assumed that patching `Path.is_dir(p)` (indirectly) patch the bound method `p.is_dir` as well, but that does not seem to be the case. So that leaves me with the question: is there a robust way to patch methods that can be called either way? Or more concretely: how can I patch `Path.is_dir` so that the following works? ```python from pathlib import Path from unittest import mock some_path = Path("/some/path/") with mock.patch(???) as m_is_dir: m_is_dir.side_effect = lambda p: p.name == "" print(Path.is_dir(some_path)) print(some_path.is_dir()) ``` It might be that there is an obvious solution, but I am in too deep and I don't seem to be able to find it, so any help would be greatly appreciated.