Testing a jsonify response - python - unit-testing

Question

I have the following method in Flask that return a jsonify response, so when hitting http://127.0.0.1:5000/status route, it should renderize in a browser
[
{
user: "admin"
},
{
result: "OK - Healthy"
}
]
The method is this:
#app.route('/status')
def health_check():
response = [
{'user': 'admin'},
{'result': 'OK - Healthy'}
]
return jsonify(response)
I am trying to build a test case that examine the content of the jsonify(response) object returned:
class HealthStatusCase(unittest.TestCase):
def test_health_check(self):
response = health_check()
self.assertEqual(response, ['200 OK'])
But I don't know how to check the content of a jsonify output, the above test is misleading.
When I check the value of the jsonify(response) I get
pdb> jsonify(response)
<Response 71 bytes [200 OK]>
ipdb>
But that I am interested in is to access to the content of the response list, such as:
{'result': 'OK - Healthy'} and compare that key value pair.
UPDATE
I've followed the pytest approach suggested, by working with a fixture to make a request to /status endpoint, so the test case is now like this:
#pytest.fixture
def test_health_check(client):
response = client.get('/status')
assert response.json == [
{'user': 'admin'},
{'result': 'OK - Healthy'}
]
When I execute python -m pytest tests/test_health_check.py the test pass:
> python -m pytest tests/test_health_check.py
============================================================== test session starts ===============================================================
platform linux -- Python 3.10.6, pytest-7.2.0, pluggy-1.0.0
rootdir: /home/../../
plugins: flask-1.2.0
collected 1 item
tests/test_health_check.py . [100%]
=============================================================== 1 passed in 0.11s ================================================================
But then something that I miss is that if I modified the assert response.json content to let's say like this:
#pytest.fixture
def test_health_check(client):
response = client.get('/status')
assert response.json == [
{'user': 'admin'},
{'result': 'OKdsdsd - Healthy'}
]
The test also pass
I know a feature is intended to ilustrate a behavior and run it inside a test, but is there a way to make a relationship with the original values of the json in my orginal response list? I feel that this test is non meaningful.

Answer 1

Better use pytest library for testing.
With it your code will be super simple
def test_health_check(client):
response = client.get('/status')
assert response.json == [
{'user': 'admin'},
{'result': 'OK - Healthy'}
]
Based on Flask docs article about testing: https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.2.x/testing/
Docs for pytest: https://docs.pytest.org/
Update:
In order to make the test above to work you should add this to tests/conftest.py
import pytest
from my_project import create_app
#pytest.fixture()
def app():
app = create_app()
app.config.update({
"TESTING": True,
})
yield app
#pytest.fixture()
def client(app):
return app.test_client()
#pytest.fixture()
def runner(app):
return app.test_cli_runner()
Or if you not have smth as a create_app function
import pytest
from my_project import app
#pytest.fixture()
def client(app):
return app.test_client()
#pytest.fixture()
def runner(app):
return app.test_cli_runner()
Copied from: https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/2.2.x/testing/#fixtures