HTTPretty 0.5.8 – mock HTTP requests in Python at the socket level

Re:HTTPretty 0.5.8 – mock HTTP requests in Python at the soc... by RegEx on Thursday February 14, 2013 @05:32PM (#5222941)

I really, really like this. I will definitely use it at work and for my own personal projects.

I will admit, though, that I'm not a fan of the rspec-like broken English. I hate to bikeshed here, because I really do love this idea, but these are just the opinions of myself, nobody particularly important. Feel free to disregard them :)

Some find the following to be more readable by the fact that it has more English words:

    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).to.have.property("querystring").being.equal({
    ...

It is in fact easy to read, but I find it very hard to write. The fact that the commands are so close to English throws me off more, because there are so many ways to construct a "sentence" that "sounds right" but is not equal to the desired command.

    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).to.have.property("querystring").being.equal({
    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).to.have("querystring").being.equal({
    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).to.have.property("querystring").equal({
    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).to.have("querystring").equal({

I would personally prefer something like the following. Even though it isn't as friendly to non programmers and doesn't read like English at all, it's hard to get wrong.

    expect(HTTPretty.last_request).querystring.equals({

I obviously do not know enough about the project yet to know if there are so many potential properties (such as 'querystring') that the .property method became a structural necessity as opposed to syntactical sugar. If there aren't so many properties, I'd just hardcode them into methods/properties.

Once again, I really look forward to using this project, and it's perfectly okay to reject my opinions. The beauty of open source is that I can simply create a wrapper around what I dislike! :)

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Re:HTTPretty 0.5.8 – mock HTTP requests in Python at the soc... by kisielk on Thursday February 14, 2013 @07:03PM (#5223511)

You don't have to do that. It's just the test framework they are using alongside HTTPretty in their examples.

You can just as easily use the traditional unittest.TestCase methods:

  self.assertEqual(HTTPretty.last_request.querystring, "whatever")
  self.assertEqual(HTTPretty.last_request.method, HTTPretty.GET)

That is what I do in my tests.

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Re:HTTPretty 0.5.8 – mock HTTP requests in Python at the soc... by RegEx on Thursday February 14, 2013 @09:08PM (#5224007)

Ah, I see, thanks!

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Re:HTTPretty 0.5.8 – mock HTTP requests in Python at the soc... by derelk on Thursday February 14, 2013 @06:21PM (#5223274)

I agree. I really winced at that bizarre syntax. I find it strange to read and painfully unintuitive to write. It's not just "un-Pythonic"; it's unlike almost any other library.

I would also imagine the strange structure and all those nested accessors makes debugging and developing for the library itself unnecessarily complicated, thereby impeding contributions to the project itself.

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