Question

I’m trying to use Mock, to simulate a function in python. Here is my code:

    resp, content = request(...)

The request() function needs to return two values. Here’s what I tried:

    with patch("syncdatetime.py") as sync_mock:
        sync_mock.request.return_value = [obj, '']

But when I run the test, I get the error “Mock object is not iterable.” The request function returns an object of type Mock instead of a list. How can I patch the request function so that it returns a list?

Answer 1

Note of disclosure, I’m new to mock so I’m not an expert, however, I have just suffered the same problem and found that setting the side_effect attribute to a function that returns an array fixes things

From your example code, change:

with patch("syncdatetime.py") as sync_mock:
    sync_mock.request.return_value = [obj, '']

to

with patch("syncdatetime.py") as sync_mock:
    sync_mock.request.side_effect = function_returning_list

and define

def function_returning_list(arg_list_of_choice):
    #anything you want to do goes here
    #then
    return your_list