Unittest tests order

Question

How can I be sure of the unittest methods' order? Is the alphabetical or numeric prefixes the proper way?

class TestFoo(TestCase):
    def test_1(self):
        ...
    def test_2(self):
        ...

or

class TestFoo(TestCase):
    def test_a(self):
        ...
    def test_b(self):
        ...

Answer 1

You can disable it by setting sortTestMethodsUsing to None:

import unittest
unittest.TestLoader.sortTestMethodsUsing = None

For pure unit tests, you folks are right; but for component tests and integration tests... I do not agree that you shall assume nothing about the state. What if you are testing the state?

For example, your test validates that a service is auto-started upon installation. If in your setup, you start the service, then do the assertion, and then you are no longer testing the state, but you are testing the "service start" functionality.

Another example is when your setup takes a long time or requires a lot of space and it just becomes impractical to run the setup frequently.

Many developers tend to use "unit test" frameworks for component testing...so stop and ask yourself, am I doing unit testing or component testing?