Simple way of creating Mock objects from nested dictionaries.

mock_object.py

import mock
def mock_object(data=None):
    result = mock.MagicMock()
    for key, value in data.iteritems():
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            result.configure_mock(**{
                key: mock_object(value),
            })
        else:
            result.configure_mock(**{
                key: value,
            })
    return result

MyFactory = mock_object({
    'return_value' : {
        'type' : 'Factory',
        'get_person' : {
            'return_value' : {
                'type' : 'Person',
                'get_friends' : {
                    'side_effect' : ValueError("Too many friends"),
                },
                'get_enemies' : {
                    'return_value' : [],
                },
                'say_hello' : lambda: 'hello',
                'say_hello_2' : {
                    'return_value' : 'hello',
                },
            },
        },
    },
})

factory = MyFactory()
assert factory.type == 'Factory'
person = factory.get_person()
assert person.type == 'Person'
try:
   friends = person.get_friends()
except ValueError as e:
  print '(caught raised error:) e'

enemies = person.get_enemies()
assert not enemies

r_hello = person.say_hello()
r_hello_2 = person.say_hello_2()
assert r_hello == r_hello_2

Found this helper function useful while mocking the Stripe API in some unit tests – the functions I was testing did various things with results of consecutive API calls and their nested responses.