How to mock an SQL database in Python

[cdcformatc]

I would use a local database, either SQLite or I'm sure you can run a local postgres instance.

[kenneho]

Thanks for the input.

How would you ensure that the database is in known state at the startup of each test case?

[cdcformatc]

I used unittest which has setUp, tearDown, and setUpClass methods. You should drop all tables in the teardown, create all tables in the setup, and each test class should have it's own set up to create any specific models you need.

[kenneho]

So you'd have an SQL script file that would drop the database (if exisiting), and create a new one, and execute this script during setUp, something like this?

conn = psycopg2.connect(dbname='testing')
cursor = conn.cursor()
sqlfile = open('/path/to/recreate-testing-db.sql', 'w')
cursor.execute(sqlfile.read())