classic xunit-style setup

This section describes a classic and popular way how you can implement fixtures (setup and teardown test state) on a per-module/class/function basis.

Note

While these setup/teardown methods are simple and familiar to those coming from a unittest or nose background, you may also consider using pytest’s more powerful fixture mechanism which leverages the concept of dependency injection, allowing for a more modular and more scalable approach for managing test state, especially for larger projects and for functional testing. You can mix both fixture mechanisms in the same file but test methods of unittest.TestCase subclasses cannot receive fixture arguments.

Module level setup/teardown

If you have multiple test functions and test classes in a single module you can optionally implement the following fixture methods which will usually be called once for all the functions:

def setup_module(module):
    """ setup any state specific to the execution of the given module."""

def teardown_module(module):
    """ teardown any state that was previously setup with a setup_module
    method.
    """

As of pytest-3.0, the module parameter is optional.

Class level setup/teardown

Similarly, the following methods are called at class level before and after all test methods of the class are called:

@classmethod
def setup_class(cls):
    """ setup any state specific to the execution of the given class (which
    usually contains tests).
    """

@classmethod
def teardown_class(cls):
    """ teardown any state that was previously setup with a call to
    setup_class.
    """

Method and function level setup/teardown

Similarly, the following methods are called around each method invocation:

def setup_method(self, method):
    """ setup any state tied to the execution of the given method in a
    class.  setup_method is invoked for every test method of a class.
    """

def teardown_method(self, method):
    """ teardown any state that was previously setup with a setup_method
    call.
    """

As of pytest-3.0, the method parameter is optional.

If you would rather define test functions directly at module level you can also use the following functions to implement fixtures:

def setup_function(function):
    """ setup any state tied to the execution of the given function.
    Invoked for every test function in the module.
    """

def teardown_function(function):
    """ teardown any state that was previously setup with a setup_function
    call.
    """

As of pytest-3.0, the function parameter is optional.

Remarks:

• It is possible for setup/teardown pairs to be invoked multiple times per testing process.
• teardown functions are not called if the corresponding setup function existed and failed/was skipped.