Fix Python – How to properly use unit-testing’s assertRaises() with NoneType objects? [duplicate]

Question 1

I did a simple test case:

def setUp(self):

  self.testListNone = None

def testListSlicing(self):

  self.assertRaises(TypeError, self.testListNone[:1])

and I am expecting test to pass, but I am getting exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):

    self.assertRaises(TypeError, self.testListNone[:1])

TypeError: 'NoneType' object is unsubscriptable

I thought that assertRaises will pass since TypeError exception will
be raised?

Question 2

If you are using python2.7 or above you can use the ability of assertRaises to be use as a context manager and do:

with self.assertRaises(TypeError):
    self.testListNone[:1]

If you are using python2.6 another way beside the one given until now is to use unittest2 which is a back port of unittest new feature to python2.6, and you can make it work using the code above.

N.B: I’m a big fan of the new feature (SkipTest, test discovery …) of unittest so I intend to use unittest2 as much as I can. I advise to do the same because there is a lot more than what unittest come with in python2.6 <.

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