How do I correctly setup and teardown for my pytest class with tests?

Question

I am using selenium for end to end testing and I can't get how to use setup_class and teardown_class methods.

I need to set up browser in setup_class method, then perform a bunch of tests defined as class methods and finally quit browser in teardown_class method.

But logically it seems like a bad solution, because in fact my tests will not work with class, but with object. I pass self param inside every test method, so I can access objects' vars:

class TestClass:
  
    def setup_class(cls):
        pass
        
    def test_buttons(self, data):
        # self.$attribute can be used, but not cls.$attribute?  
        pass
        
    def test_buttons2(self, data):
        # self.$attribute can be used, but not cls.$attribute?
        pass
        
    def teardown_class(cls):
        pass
    

And it even seems not to be correct to create browser instance for class.. It should be created for every object separately, right?

So, I need to use __init__ and __del__ methods instead of setup_class and teardown_class?

Answer 1

According to Fixture finalization / executing teardown code, the current best practice for setup and teardown is to use yield instead of return:

import pytest

@pytest.fixture()
def resource():
    print("setup")
    yield "resource"
    print("teardown")

class TestResource:
    def test_that_depends_on_resource(self, resource):
        print("testing {}".format(resource))

Running it results in

$ py.test --capture=no pytest_yield.py
=== test session starts ===
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.10, pytest-3.0.2, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.3.1
collected 1 items

pytest_yield.py setup
testing resource
.teardown


=== 1 passed in 0.01 seconds ===

Another way to write teardown code is by accepting a request-context object into your fixture function and calling its request.addfinalizer method with a function that performs the teardown one or multiple times:

import pytest

@pytest.fixture()
def resource(request):
    print("setup")

    def teardown():
        print("teardown")
    request.addfinalizer(teardown)
    
    return "resource"

class TestResource:
    def test_that_depends_on_resource(self, resource):
        print("testing {}".format(resource))

Answer 2

When you write "tests defined as class methods", do you really mean class methods (methods which receive its class as first parameter) or just regular methods (methods which receive an instance as first parameter)?

Since your example uses self for the test methods I'm assuming the latter, so you just need to use setup_method instead:

class Test:

    def setup_method(self, test_method):
        # configure self.attribute

    def teardown_method(self, test_method):
        # tear down self.attribute

    def test_buttons(self):
        # use self.attribute for test

The test method instance is passed to setup_method and teardown_method, but can be ignored if your setup/teardown code doesn't need to know the testing context. More information can be found here.

I also recommend that you familiarize yourself with py.test's fixtures, as they are a more powerful concept.