pytest-unmagic

Pytest fixtures with conventional import semantics.

pytest's fixtures are powerful, but they rely on "magic": a test requests a fixture by adding an argument whose name matches the fixture, and pytest resolves it at runtime by searching conftest.py files and plugins. Where a fixture comes from is not visible in the code, "go to definition" does not work, and fixtures cannot be applied to unittest.TestCase tests.

pytest-unmagic applies the principle that explicit is better than implicit: fixtures are imported, applied with a decorator, and called like ordinary Python objects. Every dependency is visible and easy to navigate. Unmagic fixtures coexist with standard pytest fixtures, so a project can adopt them gradually, one fixture at a time.

Installation

pip install pytest-unmagic

Usage

Define fixtures with the unmagic.fixture decorator, and apply them to other fixtures or test functions with unmagic.use.

from unmagic import fixture, use

traces = []

@fixture
def tracer():
    assert not traces, f"unexpected traces before setup: {traces}"
    yield
    traces.clear()

@use(tracer)
def test_append():
    traces.append("hello")
    assert traces, "expected at least one trace"

A fixture must yield exactly once. The @use decorator causes the fixture to be set up and registered for tear down, but does not pass the yielded value to the decorated function. This is appropriate for fixtures that have side effects.

The location where a fixture is defined has no affect on where it can be used. Any code that can import it can use it as long as it is executed in the context of running tests and does not violate scope restrictions.

@use shorthand

If a single fixture is being applied to another fixture or test it may be applied directly as a decorator without @use(). The test in the example above could have been written as

@tracer
def test_append():
    traces.append("hello")
    assert traces, "expected at least one trace"

Call a fixture to retrieve its value

The value of a fixture can be retrieved within a test function or other fixture by calling the fixture. This is similar to request.getfixturevalue().

@fixture
def tracer():
    assert not traces, f"unexpected traces before setup: {traces}"
    yield traces
    traces.clear()

def test_append():
    traces = tracer()
    traces.append("hello")
    assert traces, "expected at least one trace"

Learn more

The reference guide documents the rest of unmagic's features in detail, including:

• Applying fixtures to test classes and unittest.TestCase tests
• Fixture scopes and teardown
• Autouse fixtures
• Accessing pytest's request object and reusing @pytest.fixture fixtures
• Chaining fixtures that depend on other fixtures
• Erecting a fence to flag remaining magic-fixture usage

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to run the test suite and publish a new release.