How do I convert a unittest subtest to pytest [duplicate]

Question

I have some kind of test data and want to create a unit test for each item. My first idea was to do it like this:

import unittest

l = [["foo", "a", "a",], ["bar", "a", "b"], ["lee", "b", "b"]]

class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):
    def testsample(self):
        for name, a,b in l:
            print "test", name
            self.assertEqual(a,b)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

The downside of this is that it handles all data in one test. I would like to generate one test for each item on the fly. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

This is called "parametrization".

There are several tools that support this approach. E.g.:

• pytest's decorator
• parameterized

The resulting code looks like this:

from parameterized import parameterized

class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):
    @parameterized.expand([
        ["foo", "a", "a",],
        ["bar", "a", "b"],
        ["lee", "b", "b"],
    ])
    def test_sequence(self, name, a, b):
        self.assertEqual(a,b)

Which will generate the tests:

test_sequence_0_foo (__main__.TestSequence) ... ok
test_sequence_1_bar (__main__.TestSequence) ... FAIL
test_sequence_2_lee (__main__.TestSequence) ... ok

======================================================================
FAIL: test_sequence_1_bar (__main__.TestSequence)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/parameterized/parameterized.py", line 233, in <lambda>
    standalone_func = lambda *a: func(*(a + p.args), **p.kwargs)
  File "x.py", line 12, in test_sequence
    self.assertEqual(a,b)
AssertionError: 'a' != 'b'

For historical reasons I'll leave the original answer circa 2008):

I use something like this:

import unittest

l = [["foo", "a", "a",], ["bar", "a", "b"], ["lee", "b", "b"]]

class TestSequense(unittest.TestCase):
    pass

def test_generator(a, b):
    def test(self):
        self.assertEqual(a,b)
    return test

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for t in l:
        test_name = 'test_%s' % t[0]
        test = test_generator(t[1], t[2])
        setattr(TestSequense, test_name, test)
    unittest.main()

Answer 2

Using unittest (since 3.4)

Since Python 3.4, the standard library unittest package has the subTest context manager.

See the documentation:

• 26.4.7. Distinguishing test iterations using subtests
• subTest

Example:

from unittest import TestCase

param_list = [('a', 'a'), ('a', 'b'), ('b', 'b')]

class TestDemonstrateSubtest(TestCase):
    def test_works_as_expected(self):
        for p1, p2 in param_list:
            with self.subTest():
                self.assertEqual(p1, p2)

You can also specify a custom message and parameter values to subTest():

with self.subTest(msg="Checking if p1 equals p2", p1=p1, p2=p2):

Using nose

The nose testing framework supports this.

Example (the code below is the entire contents of the file containing the test):

param_list = [('a', 'a'), ('a', 'b'), ('b', 'b')]

def test_generator():
    for params in param_list:
        yield check_em, params[0], params[1]

def check_em(a, b):
    assert a == b

The output of the nosetests command:

> nosetests -v
testgen.test_generator('a', 'a') ... ok
testgen.test_generator('a', 'b') ... FAIL
testgen.test_generator('b', 'b') ... ok

======================================================================
FAIL: testgen.test_generator('a', 'b')
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/nose-0.10.1-py2.5.egg/nose/case.py", line 203, in runTest
    self.test(*self.arg)
  File "testgen.py", line 7, in check_em
    assert a == b
AssertionError

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.006s

FAILED (failures=1)

Answer 3

This can be solved elegantly using Metaclasses:

import unittest

l = [["foo", "a", "a",], ["bar", "a", "b"], ["lee", "b", "b"]]

class TestSequenceMeta(type):
    def __new__(mcs, name, bases, dict):

        def gen_test(a, b):
            def test(self):
                self.assertEqual(a, b)
            return test

        for tname, a, b in l:
            test_name = "test_%s" % tname
            dict[test_name] = gen_test(a,b)
        return type.__new__(mcs, name, bases, dict)

class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):
    __metaclass__ = TestSequenceMeta

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Answer 4

As of Python 3.4, subtests have been introduced to unittest for this purpose. See the documentation for details. TestCase.subTest is a context manager which allows one to isolate asserts in a test so that a failure will be reported with parameter information, but it does not stop the test execution. Here's the example from the documentation:

class NumbersTest(unittest.TestCase):

def test_even(self):
    """
    Test that numbers between 0 and 5 are all even.
    """
    for i in range(0, 6):
        with self.subTest(i=i):
            self.assertEqual(i % 2, 0)

The output of a test run would be:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_even (__main__.NumbersTest) (i=1)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "subtests.py", line 32, in test_even
    self.assertEqual(i % 2, 0)
AssertionError: 1 != 0

======================================================================
FAIL: test_even (__main__.NumbersTest) (i=3)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "subtests.py", line 32, in test_even
    self.assertEqual(i % 2, 0)
AssertionError: 1 != 0

======================================================================
FAIL: test_even (__main__.NumbersTest) (i=5)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "subtests.py", line 32, in test_even
    self.assertEqual(i % 2, 0)
AssertionError: 1 != 0

This is also part of unittest2, so it is available for earlier versions of Python.

Answer 5

load_tests is a little known mechanism introduced in 2.7 to dynamically create a TestSuite. With it, you can easily create parametrized tests.

For example:

import unittest

class GeneralTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def __init__(self, methodName, param1=None, param2=None):
        super(GeneralTestCase, self).__init__(methodName)

        self.param1 = param1
        self.param2 = param2

    def runTest(self):
        pass  # Test that depends on param 1 and 2.


def load_tests(loader, tests, pattern):
    test_cases = unittest.TestSuite()
    for p1, p2 in [(1, 2), (3, 4)]:
        test_cases.addTest(GeneralTestCase('runTest', p1, p2))
    return test_cases

That code will run all the TestCases in the TestSuite returned by load_tests. No other tests are automatically run by the discovery mechanism.

Alternatively, you can also use inheritance as shown in this ticket: http://bugs.python.org/msg151444

Answer 6

It can be done by using pytest. Just write the file test_me.py with content:

import pytest

@pytest.mark.parametrize('name, left, right', [['foo', 'a', 'a'],
                                               ['bar', 'a', 'b'],
                                               ['baz', 'b', 'b']])
def test_me(name, left, right):
    assert left == right, name

And run your test with command py.test --tb=short test_me.py. Then the output will look like:

=========================== test session starts ============================
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.6 -- py-1.4.23 -- pytest-2.6.1
collected 3 items

test_me.py .F.

================================= FAILURES =================================
_____________________________ test_me[bar-a-b] _____________________________
test_me.py:8: in test_me
    assert left == right, name
E   AssertionError: bar
==================== 1 failed, 2 passed in 0.01 seconds ====================

It is simple! Also pytest has more features like fixtures, mark, assert, etc.

Answer 7

Use the ddt library. It adds simple decorators for the test methods:

import unittest
from ddt import ddt, data
from mycode import larger_than_two

@ddt
class FooTestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    @data(3, 4, 12, 23)
    def test_larger_than_two(self, value):
        self.assertTrue(larger_than_two(value))

    @data(1, -3, 2, 0)
    def test_not_larger_than_two(self, value):
        self.assertFalse(larger_than_two(value))

This library can be installed with pip. It doesn't require nose, and works excellent with the standard library unittest module.

Answer 8

You would benefit from trying the TestScenarios library.

testscenarios provides clean dependency injection for python unittest style tests. This can be used for interface testing (testing many implementations via a single test suite) or for classic dependency injection (provide tests with dependencies externally to the test code itself, allowing easy testing in different situations).

Answer 9

You can use the nose-ittr plugin (pip install nose-ittr).

It's very easy to integrate with existing tests, and minimal changes (if any) are required. It also supports the nose multiprocessing plugin.

Note that you can also have a customize setup function per test.

@ittr(number=[1, 2, 3, 4])
def test_even(self):
    assert_equal(self.number % 2, 0)

It is also possible to pass nosetest parameters like with their built-in plugin attrib. This way you can run only a specific test with specific parameter:

nosetest -a number=2

Answer 10

I use metaclasses and decorators for generate tests. You can check my implementation python_wrap_cases. This library doesn't require any test frameworks.

Your example:

import unittest
from python_wrap_cases import wrap_case


@wrap_case
class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):

    @wrap_case("foo", "a", "a")
    @wrap_case("bar", "a", "b")
    @wrap_case("lee", "b", "b")
    def testsample(self, name, a, b):
        print "test", name
        self.assertEqual(a, b)

Console output:

testsample_u'bar'_u'a'_u'b' (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... test bar
FAIL
testsample_u'foo'_u'a'_u'a' (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... test foo
ok
testsample_u'lee'_u'b'_u'b' (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... test lee
ok

Also you may use generators. For example this code generate all possible combinations of tests with arguments a__list and b__list

import unittest
from python_wrap_cases import wrap_case


@wrap_case
class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):

    @wrap_case(a__list=["a", "b"], b__list=["a", "b"])
    def testsample(self, a, b):
        self.assertEqual(a, b)

Console output:

testsample_a(u'a')_b(u'a') (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... ok
testsample_a(u'a')_b(u'b') (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... FAIL
testsample_a(u'b')_b(u'a') (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... FAIL
testsample_a(u'b')_b(u'b') (tests.example.test_stackoverflow.TestSequence) ... ok