how to pass command line argument from pytest to code
A good practice might to have this kind of code, instead of reading arguments from main method.
# main.py
def main(arg1):
return arg1
if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='My awesome script')
parser.add_argument('word', help='a word')
args = parser.parse_args()
main(args.word)
This way, your main method can easily be tested in pytest
import main
def test_case01():
main.main(your_hardcoded_arg)
I am not sure you can call a python script to test except by using os
module, which might be not a good practice
If you can't modify the signature of the main
method, you can use the monkeypatching technique to temporarily replace the arguments with the test data. Example: imagine writing tests for the following program:
import argparse
def main():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Greeter')
parser.add_argument('name')
args = parser.parse_args()
return f'hello {args.name}'
if __name__ == '__main__':
print(main())
When running it from the command line:
$ python greeter.py world
hello world
To test the main
function with some custom data, monkeypatch sys.argv
:
import sys
import greeter
def test_greeter(monkeypatch):
with monkeypatch.context() as m:
m.setattr(sys, 'argv', ['greeter', 'spam'])
assert greeter.main() == 'hello spam'
When combined with the parametrizing technique, this allows to easily test different arguments without modifying the test function:
import sys
import pytest
import greeter
@pytest.mark.parametrize('name', ['spam', 'eggs', 'bacon'])
def test_greeter(monkeypatch, name):
with monkeypatch.context() as m:
m.setattr(sys, 'argv', ['greeter', name])
assert greeter.main() == 'hello ' + name
Now you get three tests, one for each of the arguments:
$ pytest -v test_greeter.py
...
test_greeter.py::test_greeter[spam] PASSED
test_greeter.py::test_greeter[eggs] PASSED
test_greeter.py::test_greeter[bacon] PASSED