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Pytest framework Python: Automated testing

When there are a lot of tests and test files, new questions arise:

  • How to group the tests?
  • How to run all the tests in one directory?
  • How many tests should be there?
  • How long should the tests be?
  • Can we run the tests in parallel?

Test frameworks solve these issues. They help organize the structure of tests and give many handy things, such as convenient output. We'll get acquainted with most of these features later in the course.

The Pytest framework is popular in the Python world, and we'll focus on it in this lesson.

What is Pytest

Python is one of the few languages whose standard library already includes the latest framework — it is called unittest. It would be logical to look at it here, but it is deeply tied to classes you may not know. Therefore, we're looking at Pytest, which is still more popular than the embedded framework.

Next, we'll create a project from scratch and add tests.

The setup of Pytest

Create a directory somewhere on your computer with the name hexlet_pytest. Go into it and run the following commands:

# Installing Poetry via the link: https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation
poetry new . # Creating the base structure
poetry install # Installing dependencies

The poetry new command creates a dummy Python package and adds a directory for future tests. Install Pytest in the dev group using the poetry add-G dev pytest command. Check that everything is working correctly:

poetry run pytest
# We see a sample output
platform darwin -- Python 3.8.2, pytest-5.4.3, py-1.10.0, pluggy-0.13.1
rootdir: /private/tmp/hexlet_pytest
collected 0 items

======= no tests ran in 0.01s =======

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