Allow users to extend unittest.TestCase.

When users extend their test cases with custom assert-methods (for example,
def assertIsEmail(self, s)), for every test using that assertion, machineout
now returns the line number inside the assertIsEmail method.  This isn't
useful, since you lose the information as to what particular test is failing.

This patch solves that problem by skipping any methods that start with
'assert' when walking up the stack trace.

And, yes, this assumes the convention that your unittest.TestCase extensions
use the 'assert'-prefix, which would be a good naming convention anyway.

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/machineout.py b/machineout.py
index 7609abf..c5144ea 100644
--- a/machineout.py
+++ b/machineout.py
@@ -49,7 +49,12 @@ class NoseMachineReadableOutput(Plugin):
         try:
             while True:
                 fname, lineno, funname, msg = fulltb.pop()
-                if fname.startswith(self.basepath):
+
+                # The check for the `assert' prefix allows the user to extend
+                # unittest.TestCase with custom assert-methods, while
+                # machineout still returns the most useful error line number.
+                if fname.startswith(self.basepath) \
+                        and not funname.startswith('assert'):
                     break
         except IndexError:
             fname, lineno, funname, msg = fallback