How to call an individual method from another python module which has got a main function in it

Question

I'm having a python module eg: myexample.py with the below contents.

import os, sys
class nw_clss():
    def new_func():
        /*some statements*/

def main():

main(some arguments)

Now am writing a unittest framework where I would need to call some individual functions in the myexample.py. However, since there is a main method inside the myexample.py, whenever am trying to call an individual function, the framework is actually calling the main method and executing all methods available in myexample.py

Is there any possible to override this and just call the individual methods.

Thanks, Arjun

Answer 1

this is the purpose of

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

which you might have seen from time to time.

when you run a module directly, its __name__ variable will be '__main__', but it will be different if imported by another module, so code in a block like this will only execute when that module is run directly.

EDIT: to clarify, what you want to have is

import os, sys
class nw_clss():
    def new_func():
        /*some statements*/

def main():
    pass

if __name__ == '__main_':
    main(some arguments)

EDIT 2: from the comments

in your unittest module if you only want to test 1 part of the module (eg the class) you can import only that:

from myexample import nw_clss

which won't run the whole module. It's less good that writing code with good practice, but if for some reason whoever wrote that original code won't let you then I guess that is what you have to do.