Add Actor Mocks

[lor1113]

New merge request made due to manually copying changes into a new branch being seemingly the only way to avoid weird git diff issues.

Description

Added Mock Actor capability.

NOTE: Due to not being able to get dapr-docs running in its own dev container despite repeated attempts (I am simply not a frontend coder so i don't know how to debug all the weird errors it was spitting out), I have not been able to actually view the new documentation within a running instance of the website. I have written it nonetheless using the same templating as the others, as well as basic markdown syntax, but it would be appreciated if someone who has a develop version of the docs website working on their machine could just give it a quick look to make sure it's not somehow broken.

Issue reference

We strive to have all PR being opened based on an issue, where the problem or feature have been discussed prior to implementation.

Please reference the issue this PR will close: #737

Checklist

Please make sure you've completed the relevant tasks for this PR, out of the following list:

• Code compiles correctly
• Created/updated tests
• Extended the documentation

Release Note

RELEASE NOTE: ADD Mock actors for unit testing actor methods

[elena-kolevska]

I'm sorry I haven't gotten to this PR yet, we're all really busy with the 1.15 release.
I noticed you renamed one of the docs files. I think we should revert that change, because this .md is shown directly in the dapr docs: https://docs.dapr.io/developing-applications/sdks/python/python-actor/.
Also, please move the new docs you added in the existing page.

[lor1113]

@elena-kolevska

The file was renamed such that it would be able to have sub-files, like how the main "Extensions" page under the Python SDK documentation is called "index.md" (https://docs.dapr.io/developing-applications/sdks/python/python-sdk-extensions/) with the idea that the mock actor documentation could be confined to a sub-file for brevity.

Requested changes have been made regardless. It's now simply appended to the end of the current actor documentation.

[lor1113]

This should fix the formatting and type issues (with some type:ignores, but I don't think there's a better way without significant work), I also re-ran the tests to make sure they didn't break since I last checked them (worth noting that I do actually get some tests breaking, some random grpc client ones, possibly because I'm just running directly on windows and not using a dev container since it kept breaking for me). All the actor tests + the new ones I added run OK at least.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Attention: Patch coverage is 87.43455% with 24 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Project coverage is 86.08%. Comparing base (bffb749) to head (d095086).
Report is 12 commits behind head on main.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
dapr/actor/runtime/mock_state_manager.py	85.00%	24 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #750      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   86.63%   86.08%   -0.55%     
==========================================
  Files          84       89       +5     
  Lines        4473     4972     +499     
==========================================
+ Hits         3875     4280     +405     
- Misses        598      692      +94     

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
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[elena-kolevska]

Looks great @lor1113!
I suggested some text cleanup in the docs (thank you for writing such a detailed guide).
As you had noticed before, there's a bug in the try_add_state method of the state manager, and I already sent a pr here: #756.
Feel free to update your mock to follow the same logic.

Two requests: please add a unit test for the mock state manager and an example for using a mock in the examples directory, that also serves as our suite of integration tests.

Again, great work!

[elena-kolevska]

Do we need this?

[lor1113]

If you don't add this, then because of the type hinting problems mentioned earlier, the _mock_state, _mock_reminders and _mock_timer variables won't be correctly type hinted by the IDE, and will show up as white unknown variables.

With those type hint stubs

Without

Yes the code would still run just fine, but it's not very nice, no?

Type hinting the MockStateManager is of no use, because (as you can see in the image) it thinks the _state_manager variable it is dealing with is an ActorStateManager instead of MockStateManager.

In my view adding these stubs to ActorStateManager is harmless (at least, I cannot think of a scenario where they might cause problems or be undesirable) so I think they're worth having.

[elena-kolevska]

I'm leaning more towards removing the _mock arguments from the main code, and rely on good documentation (which @lor1113 already did) for awareness of the properties' existence. What do you think @berndverst ?

[elena-kolevska]

here's the fix for the examples test and a few other suggestions. Looking through the other changes now.

[elena-kolevska]

Can we suggest a workaround here? For example, creating their own mock actor wrapper, using our mock.

[lor1113]

It's a bit hard to think about how to suggest a workaround here, as by definition if someone is overriding those methods they're already doing something pretty out-of-the-box where it's hard to suggest a generic fix. But I did add in something in the latest commit, see if you approve.

[elena-kolevska]

Is this by design, so users can have more control _on_activate? If yes, please mention that.

[elena-kolevska]

your code will likely break

This can sound a bit scary to users :) Let's say "tests may fail" instead.
There was another instance of the same phrasing, I think, I'd update that one too.

[elena-kolevska]

I'm leaning more towards removing the _mock arguments from the main code, and rely on good documentation (which @lor1113 already did) for awareness of the properties' existence. What do you think @berndverst ?

[elena-kolevska]

Great work @lor1113 , thank you for your contribution and resiliency while working on getting it merged.

[marcduiker]

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