Run unittest from a Python program via a command-line option

Question

Here is my set up -

project/     __init__.py     prog.py     test/         __init__.py         test_prog.py 

I would like to be able to run my unit tests by calling a command-line option in prog.py. This way, when I deploy my project, I can deploy the ability to run the unit tests at any time.

python prog.py --unittest 

What do I need in prog.py, or the rest of my project for this to work?

Answer 1

The Python unittest module contains its own test discovery function, which you can run from the command line:

$ python -m unittest discover 

To run this command from within your module, you can use the subprocess module:

#!/usr/bin/env python  import sys import subprocess  # ... # the rest of your module's code # ...  if __name__ == '__main__':     if '--unittest' in sys.argv:         subprocess.call([sys.executable, '-m', 'unittest', 'discover']) 

If your module has other command-line options you probably want to look into argparse for more advanced options.