Writing tests

One test should only verify a single feature/method. I.e., one test for create_resource(), another for update_resource(), etc.

Negative tests

When writing negative tests, try to use the following format:

with pytest.raises(botocore.exceptions.ClientError) as exc:
    client.failing_call(..)
err = exc.value.response["Error"]
# These assertions use the 'sure' library, but any assertion style is accepted
err["Code"].should.equal(..)
err["Message"].should.equal(..)

This is the best way to ensure that exceptions are dealt with correctly by Moto.

ServerMode tests

Our CI runs all tests twice - one normal run, and one run in ServerMode. In ServerMode, Moto is started as a stand-alone Flask server, and all tests are run against this Flask-instance.

To verify whether your tests pass in ServerMode, you can run the following commands:

moto_server
TEST_SERVER_MODE=true pytest -sv tests/test_service/..

Parallel tests

To speed up our CI, the ServerMode tests for the awslambda, batch, ec2 and sqs services will run in parallel. This means the following:

  • Make sure you use unique names for functions/queues/etc

  • Calls to describe_reservations()/list_queues()/etc might return resources from other tests