mocking for testing in this case note that the class being tested is instantiated first the magicmock is then instantiated and assigned to the name of the method to be mocked this in effect replaces that method for the test_object the magicmock the magicmock object is given name as this helps with treating any issues in the report generated by the unites framework following this the canned response from the mock version of the _hidden_method(is definedit will always return the value at this point we have set up the mock to be used for the test and are now ready to run the test this is done in the next line where the public_method(is called on the test_object with the parameter the result is then stored the test then validates the result to ensure that it is correcti that the returned value is although this is very simple example it illustrates how method can be mocked out using the magicmock class the patchers the unittest mock patch()unittest mock patch object(and unittest patch dict(decorators can be used to simplify the creation of mock objects the patch decorator takes target for the patch and returns magicmock object in its place it can be used as tastcase method or class decorator as class decorator it decorates each test method in the class automatically it can also be used as context manager via the with and with-as statements the patch object decorator can be provided with either two or three arguments when given three arguments it will replace the object to be patchedwith mock for the given attribute/method name when given two arguments the object to be patched is given default magicmock object for the specified attribute/function the patch dict decorator patches dictionary or dictionary like object for examplewe can rewrite the example presented in the previous section using the @patch object decorator to provides the mock object for the _hidden_method((it returns magicmock linked to someclass)