How do I specify a single test in a file with nosetests?

Question

I have a file called test_web.py containing a class TestWeb and many methods named like test_something().

I can run every test in the class like so:

$ nosetests test_web.py 
...
======================================================================
FAIL: checkout test
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/me/path/here/test_web.py", line 187, in test_checkout
...

But I can’t seem to run individual tests. These give me “No such test” errors when run in the same PWD:

$ nosetests test_web.py:test_checkout
$ nosetests TestWeb:test_checkout

What could be wrong here?

can't help you unless you can post your test cases or a [SSCCE](http://sscce.org/), I just tried the syntax you used with nose on my machine and it worked fine. — Jeff Tratner, Jul 02 '12 at 00:34

score 173 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 02 '12 at 00:58

173

You must specify it like so: nosetests <file>:<Test_Case>.<test_method>, or

nosetests test_web.py:TestWeb.test_checkout

See the docs

answered Jul 02 '12 at 00:58

Will

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Why on earth library uses ':' instead of '.'? ;) – omikron Jun 12 '15 at 08:57
3

Maybe to make it easy to delineate between a module and a class? – Chris Feb 14 '16 at 17:07
@omikron when I specified the file I didn't have any import errors – gabeio Aug 25 '17 at 12:44
2

Wow that's terrible, classic python libraries, not a care for existing interfaces – Dagrooms Feb 20 '18 at 16:04

score 21 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 20 '13 at 10:19

21

You can also specify a module:

nosetests tests.test_integration:IntegrationTests.test_user_search_returns_users

answered Aug 20 '13 at 10:19

michaeljoseph

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I don't know if it's a different version of Python or `nosetests` or what, but that syntax fails. What *does* work, though, is: `nosetests tests/test_integration:IntegrationTests.test_user_search_returns_users`, meaning - reference files as files, not Python modules, using `/` rather than `.` – dwanderson Mar 13 '17 at 02:35
1

@dwanderson both usages should work, as per http://nose.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html#selecting-tests. Your failure could be caused by `tests` not being a module in your setup? – michaeljoseph Mar 13 '17 at 10:04
1

Ahh, that's right, I forgot an `__init__.py` in the `tests` directory. Well done! Thanks – dwanderson Mar 15 '17 at 18:25

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 08 '16 at 15:09

Specifying names on the command line like the other answers suggest does work and is useful. However, when I'm in the midst of writing tests, I often find that I want to run just the test I'm working on, and the names that I would have to write on the command line get pretty long and cumbersome to write. In such case, I prefer to use a custom decorator and flag.

I define wipd ("work in progress decorator") like this:

from nose.plugins.attrib import attr
def wipd(f):
    return attr('wip')(f)

This defines a decorator @wipd which will set the wip attribute on objects it decorates. For instance:

import unittest
class Test(unittest.TestCase):

    @wipd
    def test_something(self):
        pass

Then -a wip can be used at the command line to narrow the execution of the test to the ones marked with @wipd.

Note on names...

I'm using the name @wipd for the decorator rather than @wip to avoid this kind of problem:

import unittest
class Test(unittest.TestCase):

    from mymodule import wip    
    @wip
    def test_something(self):
        pass

    def test_something_else(self):
        pass

The import will make the wip decorator a member of the class, and all tests in the class will be selected. The attrib plugin checks the parent class of a test method to see if the attribute selected exists there too, and the attributes that are created and tested by attrib do not exist in a segregated space. So if you test with -a foo and your class contains foo = "platypus", then all tests in the class will be selected by the plugin.

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered May 22 '17 at 09:21

5

To run multiple specific tests, you can just add them to the command line, separated by space.

nosetests test_web.py:TestWeb.test_checkout test_web.py:TestWeb.test_another_checkout

answered May 22 '17 at 09:21

Skurpi

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 14 '18 at 14:06

0

In my tests, specifying tests with module names do not work

You must specify the actual path to the .py:

nosetests /path/to/test/file.py:test_function

This with nose==1.3.7

answered Jun 14 '18 at 14:06

tread

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Grant Shannon · Answer 6 · 2019-09-23T14:37:16.680

My requirement was to run a single test in a test file that was in another windows directory - this was done from the anaconda command prompt as follows:

ran nosetests from:

(base) C:\Users\ABC\Documents\work\

but test_MyTestFile.py and methodsFile.py were in:

 (base) C:\Users\ABC\Documents\work\daily\

run single test by including path with quotes as follows:

(base) C:\Users\ABC\Documents\work>nosetests "daily\\test_MyTestFile.py:MyTestClass.test_add_integers"

test_MyTestFile.py looked like this:

import methodsFile
import unittest

class MyTestClass(unittest.TestCase):

    def test_add_integers(self):
        assert methodsFile.add(5, 3) == 8

    def test_add_integers_zero(self):
        assert methodsFile.add(3, 0) == 3

methodsFile.py looked like this:

def add(num1, num2):
        return num1 + num2

How do I specify a single test in a file with nosetests?

6 Answers6

Note on names...