[TIP] adding custom tests to a unittest test run

meme dough memedough at gmail.com
Thu May 17 19:10:39 PDT 2012


Given a directory of files containing lists of input and expected
output then generate the tests.

Using pytest http://pytest.org/latest/funcargs.html#basic-generated-test-example

Using nose http://readthedocs.org/docs/nose/en/latest/writing_tests.html#test-generators

On 17 May 2012 22:55, holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 00:57 -0700, Chris Jerdonek wrote:
>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:00 AM, holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> wrote:
>> >> > On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 09:25:28PM -0700, Chris Jerdonek wrote:
>> >> >> I often have the need to add extra tests to my unittest.main() test
>> >> >> runs.  The tests I need to add are tests that depend on data obtained
>> >> >> at run-time, e.g. user-provided command-line options.
>> >
>> > I think it's generally a better idea to skip tests when a configuration
>> > or command line option is missing rather than to not collect them.
>> > IOW, it's a good idea to keep the overall number of tests stable.
>>
>> Yes, I see the value in keeping the number of tests stable if that
>> were possible.
>>
>> However, one of the use cases, for example, is building a suite of
>> test cases dynamically from an external directory of test data (e.g. a
>> directory of files containing lists of input and expected output).
>> The runtime data to provide would be the path to the directory, which
>> may or may not be available.  Without the directory, you have no
>> choice but not to collect those tests, so there would be no tests to
>> skip.
>
> You are right, of course.  For data-driven tests the collect-then-skip
> technique does not work or make much sense.  I've often seen the case
> where people invoke test functions multiple times with different data
> which depends on command line or environment options.
>
> best,
> holger
>
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