unittest.TestLoader

class unittest.TestLoader

The TestLoader class is used to create test suites from classes and modules. Normally, there is no need to create an instance of this class; the unittest module provides an instance that can be shared as unittest.defaultTestLoader. Using a subclass or instance, however, allows customization of some configurable properties.

TestLoader objects have the following attributes:

errors

A list of the non-fatal errors encountered while loading tests. Not reset by the loader at any point. Fatal errors are signalled by the relevant a method raising an exception to the caller. Non-fatal errors are also indicated by a synthetic test that will raise the original error when run.

New in version 3.5.

TestLoader objects have the following methods:

loadTestsFromTestCase(testCaseClass)

Return a suite of all tests cases contained in the TestCase-derived testCaseClass.

A test case instance is created for each method named by getTestCaseNames(). By default these are the method names beginning with test. If getTestCaseNames() returns no methods, but the runTest() method is implemented, a single test case is created for that method instead.

loadTestsFromModule(module, pattern=None)

Return a suite of all tests cases contained in the given module. This method searches module for classes derived from TestCase and creates an instance of the class for each test method defined for the class.

Note

While using a hierarchy of TestCase-derived classes can be convenient in sharing fixtures and helper functions, defining test methods on base classes that are not intended to be instantiated directly does not play well with this method. Doing so, however, can be useful when the fixtures are different and defined in subclasses.

If a module provides a load_tests function it will be called to load the tests. This allows modules to customize test loading. This is the load_tests protocol. The pattern argument is passed as the third argument to load_tests.

Changed in version 3.2: Support for load_tests added.

Changed in version 3.5: The undocumented and unofficial use_load_tests default argument is deprecated and ignored, although it is still accepted for backward compatibility. The method also now accepts a keyword-only argument pattern which is passed to load_tests as the third argument.

loadTestsFromName(name, module=None)

Return a suite of all tests cases given a string specifier.

The specifier name is a “dotted name” that may resolve either to a module, a test case class, a test method within a test case class, a TestSuite instance, or a callable object which returns a TestCase or TestSuite instance. These checks are applied in the order listed here; that is, a method on a possible test case class will be picked up as “a test method within a test case class”, rather than “a callable object”.

For example, if you have a module SampleTests containing a TestCase-derived class SampleTestCase with three test methods (test_one(), test_two(), and test_three()), the specifier 'SampleTests.SampleTestCase' would cause this method to return a suite which will run all three test methods. Using the specifier 'SampleTests.SampleTestCase.test_two' would cause it to return a test suite which will run only the test_two() test method. The specifier can refer to modules and packages which have not been imported; they will be imported as a side-effect.

The method optionally resolves name relative to the given module.

loadTestsFromNames(names, module=None)

Similar to loadTestsFromName(), but takes a sequence of names rather than a single name. The return value is a test suite which supports all the tests defined for each name.

getTestCaseNames(testCaseClass)

Return a sorted sequence of method names found within testCaseClass; this should be a subclass of TestCase.

discover(start_dir, pattern='test*.py', top_level_dir=None)

Find all the test modules by recursing into subdirectories from the specified start directory, and return a TestSuite object containing them. Only test files that match pattern will be loaded. (Using shell style pattern matching.) Only module names that are importable (i.e. are valid Python identifiers) will be loaded.

All test modules must be importable from the top level of the project. If the start directory is not the top level directory then the top level directory must be specified separately.

If importing a module fails, for example due to a syntax error, then this will be recorded as a single error and discovery will continue. If the import failure is due to SkipTest being raised, it will be recorded as a skip instead of an error.

If a package (a directory containing a file named __init__.py) is found, the package will be checked for a load_tests function. If this exists then it will be called package.load_tests(loader, tests, pattern). Test discovery takes care to ensure that a package is only checked for tests once during an invocation, even if the load_tests function itself calls loader.discover.

If load_tests exists then discovery does not recurse into the package, load_tests is responsible for loading all tests in the package.

The pattern is deliberately not stored as a loader attribute so that packages can continue discovery themselves. top_level_dir is stored so load_tests does not need to pass this argument in to loader.discover().

start_dir can be a dotted module name as well as a directory.

New in version 3.2.

Changed in version 3.4: Modules that raise SkipTest on import are recorded as skips, not errors. Discovery works for namespace packages. Paths are sorted before being imported so that execution order is the same even if the underlying file system’s ordering is not dependent on file name.

Changed in version 3.5: Found packages are now checked for load_tests regardless of whether their path matches pattern, because it is impossible for a package name to match the default pattern.

The following attributes of a TestLoader can be configured either by subclassing or assignment on an instance:

testMethodPrefix

String giving the prefix of method names which will be interpreted as test methods. The default value is 'test'.

This affects getTestCaseNames() and all the loadTestsFrom*() methods.

sortTestMethodsUsing

Function to be used to compare method names when sorting them in getTestCaseNames() and all the loadTestsFrom*() methods.

suiteClass

Callable object that constructs a test suite from a list of tests. No methods on the resulting object are needed. The default value is the TestSuite class.

This affects all the loadTestsFrom*() methods.