Unittest setUp/tearDown for several tests

Here is an example: 3 test methods access a shared resource, which is created once, not per test.

import unittest
import random

class TestSimulateLogistics(unittest.TestCase):

    shared_resource = None

    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls.shared_resource = random.randint(1, 100)

    @classmethod
    def tearDownClass(cls):
        cls.shared_resource = None

    def test_1(self):
        print('test 1:', self.shared_resource)

    def test_2(self):
        print('test 2:', self.shared_resource)

    def test_3(self):
        print('test 3:', self.shared_resource)

I have the same scenario, for me setUpClass and tearDownClass methods works perfectly

import unittest

class Test(unittest.TestCase):
    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(cls):
        cls._connection = createExpensiveConnectionObject()

    @classmethod
    def tearDownClass(cls):
        cls._connection.destroy()

As of 2.7 (per the documentation) you get setUpClass and tearDownClass which execute before and after the tests in a given class are run, respectively. Alternatively, if you have a group of them in one file, you can use setUpModule and tearDownModule (documentation).

Otherwise your best bet is probably going to be to create your own derived TestSuite and override run(). All other calls would be handled by the parent, and run would call your setup and teardown code around a call up to the parent's run method.