Testing guide#

A standard install of akismet does not install the test suite; you will need to perform a source checkout as described in the installation guide, though performing the “editable” install step is not necessary for running the tests.

akismet’s testing tasks are run using nox, so you will also need to install it, after which you can run nox, which should be done from the root of your git checkout of akismet:

python -m pip install --upgrade nox
python -m nox

py -m pip install --upgrade nox
py -m nox

Note that to run the full test matrix you will need to have each supported version of Python available. To run only the subset of test tasks for a specific Python version, pass the --python flag with a version number. For example, to run tasks for Python 3.10 only, you could run:

python -m nox --python "3.10"

py -m nox --python "3.10"

By default, nox will only run the tasks whose associated Python versions are available on your system. For example, if you have only Python 3.8 and 3.9 installed, test runs for Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12 would be skipped. To install and manage multiple versions of Python, tools like pyenv or asdf are recommended.

To see a list of all available test tasks, run:

python -m nox --list

py -m nox --list

All test tasks defined for akismet are also categorized with tags, which nox understands and can use. For example, to run just the standard unit-test suite and no other tasks:

python -m nox --tag tests

py -m nox --tag tests

Other useful tags are: docs (documentation build and checks); formatters (code-formatting checks); linters (code linters); security (security checks); and packaging (tests for the packaging configuration and build).

The test suite makes significant use of custom HTTP clients, relying on the httpx package’s mock HTTP transport to generate test responses without needing to contact the live Akismet web service, so setting the environment variables for your Akismet API key and site URL is not necessary to run the normal test suite.

However, there is a separate test file – found at tests/end_to_end.py – which is not run as part of the usual test suite invoked by nox and which makes live requests to Akismet. Running the tests in that file does require setting the PYTHON_AKISMET_API_KEY and PYTHON_AKISMET_BLOG_URL environment variables to valid values, after which you can run the end-to-end tests by invoking nox and asking it to run tasks with the keyword release (normally this test file is only run as a final check prior to issuing a new release, hence the keyword name):

python -m nox --keyword release

py -m nox --keyword release

If you also want to manually perform your own tests, you can instantiate an Akismet client class and call its methods to communicate with the live Akismet web service. When doing so, it is recommended that you pass the optional keyword argument is_test=1 to the comment-check, submit-ham, and submit-spam operations; this tells the Akismet web service that you are only issuing requests for testing purposes, and will not result in any submissions being incorporated into Akismet’s training corpus.