pytest-relaxed 0.0.2

Relaxed test discovery/organization for pytest

pytest-relaxed provides ‘relaxed’ test discovery for pytest.

It is the spiritual successor to https://pypi.python.org/pypi/spec, but is built for pytest instead of nosetests, and rethinks some aspects of the design (such as a decreased emphasis on the display side of things.)

Rationale

Has it ever felt strange to you that we put our tests in tests/, then name the files test_foo.py, name the test classes TestFoo, and finally name the test methods test_foo_bar? Especially when almost all of the code inside of tests/ is, well, tests?

This pytest plugin takes a page from the rest of Python, where you don’t have to explicitly note public module/class members, but only need to hint as to which ones are private. By default, all files and objects pytest is told to scan will be considered tests; to mark something as not-a-test, simply prefix it with an underscore.

Relaxed discovery

The “it’s a test by default unless underscored” approach works for files:

tests
    ├── _util.py
    ├── one_module.py
    └── another_module.py

It’s applied to module members:

def _helper():
    pass

def one_thing():
    assert True

def another_thing():
    assert False

def yet_another():
    assert _helper() == 'something'

And to class members:

class SomeObject(object):
    def behavior_one(self):
        assert True

    def another_behavior(self):
        assert False

    def _helper(self):
        pass

    def it_does_things(self):
        assert self._helper() == 'whatever'

Exceptions

As you might expect, there are a few more special cases around discovery to avoid fouling up common test extensions:

• Files named conftest.py aren’t treated as tests, because they do special pytest things;

• Module and class members named setup_(module|class|method|function) are not considered tests, as they are how pytest implements classic/xunit style setup and teardown;

• Objects decorated as fixtures with @pytest.fixture are, of course, also skipped.

Installation & use

As with most pytest plugins, it’s dead simple:

• pip install pytest-relaxed;

• Tell pytest where your tests live; otherwise pytest-relaxed will cause pytest to load all of your code as tests! We recommend using setup.cfg or similar:

  [tool:pytest]
  testpaths = tests

• Write some tests, as exampled above;

• pytest to run the tests, and you’re done!