Question

Many thanks for the advice you have given me thus far. Using testbenches is something this forum has really shown me the light on and for that I am appreciative. My problem is that I am playing with a singleton and normally I won’t del it, but in a testbench I will need to. So can anyone show me how to del the thing? I’ve started with a basic example and built it up into a testbench so I can see whats going on. Now I don’t know how to get rid of it!

Many thanks!!

import sys
import logging
import unittest

LOGLEVEL = logging.DEBUG

class Singleton:
    """ A python singleton """

    class __impl:
        """ Implementation of the singleton interface """
        def __init__(self):
            self.log = logging.getLogger()
            self.log.debug("Init %s" % self.__class__.__name__)

        def id(self):
            """ Test method, return singleton id """
            return id(self)


    # storage for the instance reference
    __instance = None

    def __init__(self):
        """ Create singleton instance """
        # Check whether we already have an instance
        if Singleton.__instance is None:
            # Create and remember instance
            Singleton.__instance = Singleton.__impl()

        # Store instance reference as the only member in the handle
        self.__dict__['_Singleton__instance'] = Singleton.__instance

    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        """ Delegate access to implementation """
        return getattr(self.__instance, attr)

    def __setattr__(self, attr, value):
        """ Delegate access to implementation """
        return setattr(self.__instance, attr, value)

class A:
    def __init__(self):
        self.log = logging.getLogger()
        self.log.debug("Init %s" % self.__class__.__name__)
        self.lowclass = Singleton()
        self.id = self.lowclass.id()
        self.log.debug("ID: %s" % self.id)

class B:
    def __init__(self):
        self.log = logging.getLogger()
        self.log.debug("Init %s" % self.__class__.__name__)
        self.lowclass = Singleton()
        self.id = self.lowclass.id()
        self.log.debug("ID: %s" % self.id)


class ATests(unittest.TestCase):

    def testOne(self):
        a = A()
        aid = a.id
        b = B()
        bid = b.id
        self.assertEqual(a.id, b.id)

        #
        # How do I destroy this thing??
        #

        del a
        del b

        a1 = A()
        a1id = a1.id
        self.assertNotEqual(a1id, aid)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Set's up a basic logger
    logging.basicConfig( format="%(asctime)s %(levelname)-8s %(module)s %(funcName)s %(message)s", 
                         datefmt="%H:%M:%S", stream=sys.stderr )
    log = logging.getLogger("")
    log.setLevel(LOGLEVEL)
    # 
    suite = unittest.TestLoader().loadTestsFromTestCase(ATests)
    sys.exit(unittest.TextTestRunner(verbosity=LOGLEVEL).run(suite))

Answer 1

As Borg’s author I obviously second @mjv’s comment, but, with either Borg (aka “monostate”) or Highlander (aka “singleton”), you need to add a “drop everything” method to support the tearDown in your test suite. Naming such method with a single leading underscore tells other parts of the sw to leave it alone, but tests are atypical beasts and often need to muck with such otherwise-internal attributes.

So, for your specific case,

class Singleton:
   ...
   def _drop(self):
   "Drop the instance (for testing purposes)."
   Singleton.__instance = None
   del self._Singleton__instance

Similarly, for Borg, a _drop method would release and clear the shared dictionary and replace it with a brand new one.