python, unittest: is there a way to pass command line options to the app

Question

I have a module that imports unittest and has some TestCases. I would like to accept some command line options (for example below, the name of a data file), but when I try t

Answer 1

I thought I'd share my solution for adding a --debug switch to the test to control the logger:

if __name__=='__main__':
     parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Build a compilation script")
     parser.add_argument('--debug', help='Turn on debug messages', action='store_true', default=False)

     args = parser.parse_args()

     if args.debug:
         log_level = logging.DEBUG
     else:
         log_level = logging.INFO

     logging.basicConfig(level=log_level)
     sys.argv.pop()
     unittest.main()

Then I extended unittest.TestCase to add logging:

 class mcs_TestCase(unittest.TestCase, object):
     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
         super(mcs_TestCase,self).__init__(*args,**kwargs)
         logging.basicConfig()
         self.logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
         ...

Now I can turn messages on and off in my test using --debug, but it gets ignored in regular regressions.