Question

I’m using the Mock library to test my application, but I want to assert that some function was not called. Mock docs talk about methods like mock.assert_called_with and mock.assert_called_once_with, but I didn’t find anything like mock.assert_not_called or something related to verify mock was NOT called.

I could go with something like the following, though it doesn’t seem cool nor pythonic:

def test_something:
    # some actions
    with patch('something') as my_var:
        try:
            # args are not important. func should never be called in this test
            my_var.assert_called_with(some, args)
        except AssertionError:
            pass  # this error being raised means it's ok
    # other stuff

Any ideas how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

This should work for your case;

assert not my_var.called, 'method should not have been called'

Sample;

>>> mock=Mock()
>>> mock.a()
<Mock name='mock.a()' id='4349129872'>
>>> assert not mock.b.called, 'b was called and should not have been'
>>> assert not mock.a.called, 'a was called and should not have been'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AssertionError: a was called and should not have been