• setup_function
• teardown_function
• setup_module
• teardown_module

There are two mechanism in PyTest to setup and teardown fixtures. One of them is the xUnit-style system that is also available in other languages such as Java and C#.

In this example there are 3 tests, 3 functions that are called test_SOMETHING. There are also two pairs of functions to setup and teardown the fixtures on a per-function and per-module level.

Before starting to run the tests of this file PyTest will run the setup_module function, and after it is done running the tests PyTest will run the teardonw_module function. This will happen even if one or more of the tests failed. These functions will be called once regradless of the number of tests we have in the module.

Before every test function PyTest will run the setup_function and after the test finisihed it will run the teardown_function. Regardless of the success or failure of the test.

So in our case where we have all 4 of the fixture functions implemented and we have 3 tests function the order can be seen on the next page.

In this example we also see one of the major issues of this style. The variable db that is set in the setup_module function must be marked as global in order to make it accessible in the test functions and in the teardown_module function.

import tempfile

def setup_module():
    global db_server
    db_server = tempfile.TemporaryDirectory()
    print(f"setup_module:         {db_server}")

def teardown_module():
    print(f"teardown_module       {db_server}")


def setup_function():
    global db
    db = tempfile.TemporaryDirectory()
    print(f"  setup_function                                              {db}")

def teardown_function():
    print(f"  teardown_function                                          {db}")


def test_one():
    print(f"    test_one          {db_server} {db}")
    assert True
    print("    test_one after")

def test_two():
    print(f"    test_two          {db_server} {db}")
    assert False
    print("    test_two after")

def test_three():
    print(f"    test_three        {db_server} {db}")
    assert True
    print("    test_three after")