Django Design Patterns and Best Practices - Second Edition

Writing better test cases

We have already seen that the best test cases test a small unit of code at a time. They also need to be fast. A programmer needs to run tests at least once before every commit to the source control. Even a delay of a few seconds can tempt a programmer to skip running tests (which is not a good thing).

Here are some qualities of a good test case (which is a subjective term, of course) in the form of an easy-to-remember mnemonic fast, independent, repeatable, small, transparent (FIRST) class test case:

• Fast: The faster the tests, the more often they are run. Ideally, your tests should complete in a few seconds.
• Independent: Each test case must be independent of others and can be run in any order.
• Repeatable: The results ...