Maybe you want to be able to start database only when you start your program, or maybe you need just to set up additional processes for your tests, this is where you should consider using mirakuru, to add superpowers to your program, or tests.

As developers, we have to work on project that rely on multiple processes to run. We guard ourselves with tests. But sometimes it's not enough what one process sends, and the other receives. Sometimes there's need to actually exchange data between processes. Or write selenium tests. Or maybe write a program that takes care of starting databases or other required services itself.

If so, then mirakuru is what you need.

Mirakuru starts your required process, and wait for clear indication, that it's running. There are three basic executors with predefined conditions:

• Executor - simply starts
• OutputExecutor - awaits for specified output to be given by process
• TCPExecutor - waits for ability to connect through tcp with process
• HTTPExecutor - waits for successful HEAD request (and tcp before)
• PidExecutor - waits for a specified file to exist

from mirakuru import HTTPExecutor
from httplib import HTTPConnection, OK


def test_it_works():
    executor = HTTPExecutor("./server", url="http://localhost:6543/")

    # start and wait for it to run
    executor.start()
    # should be running!
    conn = HTTPConnection("localhost", 6543)
    conn.request('GET', '/')
    assert conn.getresponse().status is OK
    executor.stop()

The server command in this case is just a bash script that sleeps for some time and then launches the builtin SimpleHTTPServer on port 6543.

Command by which executor spawns a process, can be either string or list.

# command as string
TCPExecutor('python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025', host='localhost', port=1025)
# command as list
TCPExecutor(
    ['python, '-m', 'smtpd', '-n', '-c', 'DebuggingServer', 'localhost:1025'],
    host='localhost', port=1025
)

The project was first developed by Mateusz Lenik as summon_process. Later forked, renamed to mirakuru and tended to by The A Room @ Clearcode.

mirakuru is licensed under LGPL license, version 3.

Source code is available at: ClearcodeHQ/mirakuru. Issue tracker is located at GitHub Issues. Projects PyPI page.

When contributing, don't forget to add your name to AUTHORS.rst file.