Jan Giacomelli • 10/14/2025

How to mock different return values for each call of a method

This article explains how to use MagicMock.side_effect in Python's unittest.mock to simulate different return values or exceptions for consecutive calls to the same method. It demonstrates a practical example where a weather client's get_current method raises TimeoutError on the first two calls and succeeds on the third, testing a retry logic function. The article includes code snippets for both the test and the implementation, making it useful for developers writing unit tests for retry mechanisms or state-dependent behavior.

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#Python #testing #Unittestmock