Disable individual Python unit tests temporarily

Question

How can individual unit tests be temporarily disabled when using the unittest module in Python?

Answer 1

Focusing on the "temporarily disabled" part of the question, the best answer somewhat depends on the use case. The use case that brought me here is I am doing test driven development on a function. In this process, I successively write tests and often use break points in the function for debugging. If I just run all the tests every time I run the test runner, I end up stopping at break points for tests that already work. Adding "skip" or munging the test name or something like that is not what I want because when I am done writing the function, I want all tests to run. If I used "skip" I would have to go back and "unskip".

For my use case, the solution lies in the test runner, not in the test code. I use pytest. With pytest, it is easy to specify a single test from the command line:

pytest PYTHON_FILENAME.TEST_CLASS.TEST_NAME

(replace the caps with your values).

I understand the that question was for python-unitest. I have not used that in a long time. I would not be surprised if it had something similar to pytest. If not, you can easily switch to pytest. You do not need to modify your code. Just install it and change your test runner command.

Also, I use PyCharm Pro. On the page that shows my test code, there is a small icon next to the def for each test. I can click that icon and run that test individually.