Python unittest: cancel all tests if a specific test fails

Question

I am using unittest to test my Flask application, and nose to actually run the tests.

My first set of tests is to ensure the testing enviro

Answer 1

I'm not quite sure whether it fits your needs, but you can make the execution of a second suite of unittests conditional on the result of a first suite of unittests:

envsuite = unittest.TestSuite()
moretests = unittest.TestSuite()
# fill suites with test cases ...
envresult = unittest.TextTestRunner().run(envsuite)
if envresult.wasSuccessful():
    unittest.TextTestRunner().run(moretests)

Answer 2

In order to get one test to execute first and only halt execution of the other tests in case of an error with that test, you'll need to put a call to the test in setUp() (because python does not guarantee test order) and then fail or skip the rest on failure.

I like skipTest() because it actually doesn't run the other tests whereas raising an exception seems to still attempt to run the tests.

def setUp(self):
    # set some stuff up
    self.environment_is_clean()

def environment_is_clean(self):
    try:
        # A failing test
        assert 0 == 1
    except AssertionError:
        self.skipTest("Test environment is not clean!")

Answer 3

For your use case there's setUpModule() function:

If an exception is raised in a setUpModule then none of the tests in the module will be run and the tearDownModule will not be run. If the exception is a SkipTest exception then the module will be reported as having been skipped instead of as an error.

Test your environment inside this function.

Answer 4

You can skip entire test cases by calling skipTest() in setUp(). This is a new feature in Python 2.7. Instead of failing the tests, it will simply skip them all.