pytest-step-logger

Live, colour-coded step trees in your pytest terminal — powered by Rich.

⟳ test_checkout
├── ✔ Create booking   3.01s
├── ▶ Call API         1.24s   ← running right now
└── ○ Validate response        ← pending

Steps transition in real time:

Features

• Allure support — step labels come from @allure.step("label") when available.
• Plain-function fallback — when there is no allure, function names are used automatically (via sys.settrace).
• Ahead-of-time tree — all steps appear as grey nodes before execution starts, so you see the full plan upfront.
• Soft-assertion aware — failures from pytest-check are detected and colour the step red even though no exception propagates.
• Caught-exception fix — a step that catches and swallows an exception is correctly left green.
• pytest-xdist parallel support — a single persistent spinner panel shows every currently-running test with elapsed times; completed trees print above the panel without flicker.

Installation

pip install pytest-step-logger

With optional integrations:

# allure + pytest-check + xdist all at once
pip install "pytest-step-logger[all]"

# individual extras
pip install "pytest-step-logger[allure]"
pip install "pytest-step-logger[check]"
pip install "pytest-step-logger[xdist]"

Usage

Add --step-log to your pytest invocation:

pytest --step-log

Or make it permanent in pyproject.toml / pytest.ini:

[tool.pytest.ini_options]
addopts = "--step-log"

With allure steps

import allure

@allure.step("Create booking")
def create_booking():
    ...

@allure.step("Call API")
def call_api():
    ...

def test_checkout():
    create_booking()
    call_api()

With plain functions (no allure)

def create_booking():
    ...

def call_api():
    ...

def test_checkout():
    create_booking()
    call_api()

The plugin automatically detects the absence of allure and falls back to function names.

Parallel execution (pytest-xdist)

pytest --step-log -n auto

While tests run in parallel you see a live spinner panel:

  ⠋ test_checkout        2.3s
  ⠙ test_cancel_booking  1.1s
  ⠹ test_search          0.4s

As each test finishes its full step tree is printed above the panel.

How it works

Step records are serialised as JSON into report.user_properties and survive xdist's wire protocol transparently.

Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.11
• pytest ≥ 7.0
• rich ≥ 13.0

Optional:

• allure-pytest ≥ 2.13
• pytest-check ≥ 2.7.4
• pytest-xdist ≥ 3.8.0

License

MIT