Unit testing

What is it? Why do it?

Unit testing is a method for testing very specific aspects of a code base. The various different types of tests cover a wide range of use cases, for a quick intro take a look at RealPython’s article about unit testing: https://realpython.com/python-testing/#unit-tests-vs-integration-tests

How to manage

Our template makes use of pytest as the unit testing framework. You have the option to change that at any time, but you’ll need to make modifications in a few files:

• pyproject.toml

• .github/workflows/testing-and-coverage.yml

• .github/workflows/smoke-test.yml

• .pre-commit-config.yaml

Additionally, we advise that unit tests be placed in the ./tests directory. This is not a requirement, but the Continuous Integration and pre-commit checks will only look in that directory for tests. If you decide to keep your tests elsewhere, you should update the [tool.pytest.ini_options] section in pyproject.toml with the new location so that CI and pre-commit will work as expected.

It’s also worth noting that if you want to write exploratory tests as you develop your code, but you do not want those tests to be included in automated test runs, feel free to place those tests in a directory outside of the ./tests directory.

Note that pytest will recursively search subdirectories inside of ./tests while searching for tests to run.