How to keep Unit tests and Integrations tests separate in pytest

You can also structurally separate unit and integration tests into specific directories. Here is a sample file structure from A. Shaw's article Getting Started With Testing in Python:

With a structural approach, you:

1. do not need to manually mark various tests with attributes or @pytest.mark.
2. are not limited to a specific test runner. See examples below.

---

Examples

Here we run various test runners on integration tests alone. See the sample project/ directory in the figure above.

With unittest from the standard library:

λ python -m unittest discover -s tests/integration

With nose:

λ nose tests/integration

With pytest:

λ pytest tests/integration

Many test runners have an auto test-discovery mechanism that can find tests in sub-directories. This offers the choice to run all tests with ease, e.g.

λ cd <root_dir>
λ pytest project/

Yes, you can mark tests with the pytest.mark decorator.

Example:

def unit_test_1():
    # assert here

def unit_test_2():
    # assert here

@pytest.mark.integtest
def integration_test():
    # assert here

Now, from the command line, you can run pytest -m "not integtest" for only the unit tests, pytest -m integtest for only the integration test and plain pytest for all.

(You can also decorate your unit tests with pytest.mark.unit if you want, but I find that slightly tedious/verbose)

See the documentation for more information.