Demonstrate how to test dealing with 500 Internal Server Errors by patching the object that raises them using mock.

test_gspread.py

"""
Demonstrate how to test dealing with 500 Internal Server Errors,
e.g. when raised by calling Google Spreadsheet API
     via https://github.com/burnash/gspread,
by patching the object that raises them using mock.

"""

from mock import patch
import gspread
from urllib2 import HTTPError, urlopen
from unittest import TestCase, main


USERNAME = 'your.user.name'
PASSWORD = 'your.password'
ID = 'your.spreadsheet,id'


class testGspread(TestCase):

    def test_deal_with_500_error(self):

        with patch.object(gspread.Worksheet,
                          'update_cell',
                          side_effect=HTTPError('http://does.not.work',
                                                500,
                                                'Internal Server Error',
                                                'hdrs',
                                                urlopen('http://www.google.com'))):

            client = gspread.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
            spreadsheet = client.open_by_key(ID)
            worksheet = spreadsheet.worksheet('Sheet1')

            # This should explode
            with self.assertRaises(HTTPError):
                worksheet.update_cell(1, 2, 3)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()