Styjun

I am looking for best practices advices regarding the following context:

• I am using pytest to run integration tests on my IAC deployment


• My IAC code base is structured as:

 myapp
 |
 |_roles
 | |_role1
 | |_role2
 |_resources
 |_tomcat
 |_java

I'd like to use the same kind of structure for my test files.
Tests are currently divided in file matching roles (role1, role2):

 tests
 |
 |_roles
 |_test_role1.py
 |_test_role2.py

which lead to duplicated code, e.g:

• role1 is a tomcat base app,




• role2 holds pure java code,

So in both test files (test_role1.py and test_role2.py) there will be a java test function.

If I could add a dir structure as:

 tests
 |
 |_roles
 | |_test_role1.py
 | |_test_role2.py
 |
 |_resources
 |_test_tomcat.py
 |_test_java.py

Then I could just "include / import" the test_java.py functions to use them in test_role1.py and test_role2.py without duplicating code...

What's the best way to achieve this ?

I am already using fixtures (defined in conftest.py), and I feel that the solution to my duplicated code is something along fixture or test modules but my poor python / pytest knowledge is keeping me away from the actual solution.

Thanks

If you don't mind running your tests as a module, you could turn your Python files into packages by placing a file called 'init.py' in the root of the project, in the directory with the code to be tested and in the directory with the testing code.

You can then perform relative imports to access the functions you need:
eg to access "_test_java.py" from "_test_role2.py"

from ../_roles import _test_java

A single dot represent the current directory. Two dots represents the parent directory.

You will need to use the -m flag when calling your code so Python understands you are running a module with relative imports.

In your case you might consider performing the messy relative imports in conftest.py

This post explains the above in more detail:
http://blog.habnab.it/blog/2013/07/21/python-packages-and-you/