Get name of current test in setup using nose

Question

I am currently writing some functional tests using nose. The library I am testing manipulates a directory structure.

To get reproducible results, I store a template of a test directory structure and create a copy of that before executing a test (I do that inside the tests setup function). This makes sure that I always have a well defined state at the beginning of the test.

Now I have two further requirements:

1. If a test fails, I would like the directory structure it operated on to not be overwritten or deleted, so that I can analyze the problem.
2. I would like to be able to run multiple tests in parallel.

Both these requirements could be solved by creating a new copy with a different name for each test that is executed. For this reason, I would like to get access to the name of the test that is currently executed in the setup function, so that I can name the copy appropriately. Is there any way to achieve this?

An illustrative code example:

def setup_func(test_name):
    print "Setup of " + test_name

def teardown_func(test_name):
    print "Teardown of " + test_name

@with_setup(setup_func, teardown_func)
def test_one():
    pass

@with_setup(setup_func, teardown_func)
def test_two():
    pass

Expected output:

Setup of test_one
Teardown of test_one
Setup of test_two
Teardown of test_two

Injecting the name as a parameter would be the nicest solution, but I am open to other suggestions as well.

Answer 1

Sounds like self._testMethodName or self.id() should work for you. These are property and method on unittest.TestCase class. E.g.:

from django.test import TestCase


class MyTestCase(TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        print self._testMethodName
        print self.id()

    def test_one(self):
        self.assertIsNone(1)

    def test_two(self):
        self.assertIsNone(2)

prints:

...
AssertionError: 1 is not None
-------------------- >> begin captured stdout << ---------------------
test_one
path.MyTestCase.test_one

--------------------- >> end captured stdout << ----------------------
...
AssertionError: 2 is not None
-------------------- >> begin captured stdout << ---------------------
test_two
path.MyTestCase.test_two

--------------------- >> end captured stdout << ----------------------

Also see:

• A way to output pyunit test name in setup()
• How to get currently running testcase name from testsuite in unittest

Hope that helps.