Let’s try to make sense of this output.
First of all, we see some information
about the system the test is running on 1. I’m testing this on a macOS system,
so you may see some different output here. Most importantly, we can see which
versions of Python, pytest, and other packages are being used to run the test.
Next, we see the directory where the test is being run from 2: in my
case, python_work/chapter_11. We can see that pytest found one test to run 3,
and we can see the test file that’s being run 4. The single dot after the
name of the file tells us that a single test passed, and the 100% makes it clear
that all of the tests have been run. A large project can have hundreds or
thousands of tests, and the dots and percentage-complete indicator can be
helpful in monitoring the overall progress of the test run.
The last line tells us that one test passed, and it took less than 0.01 sec-
onds to run the test.
This output indicates that the function get_formatted_name() will always
work for names that have a first and last name, unless we modify the func-
tion. When we modify get_formatted_name(), we can run this test again. If the
test passes, we know the function will still work for names like Janis Joplin.
NOTE If you’re not sure how to navigate to the right location in the terminal, see “Running
Python Programs from a Terminal” on page 11. Also, if you see a message that the
pytest command was not found, use the command python -m pytest instead.
A Failing Test
What does a failing test look like? Let’s modify get_formatted_name() so it can
handle middle names, but let’s do so in a way that breaks the function for
names with just a first and last name, like Janis Joplin.
Here’s a new version of get_formatted_name() that requires a middle name
argument:
name def get_formatted_name(first, middle, last):
_function.py """Generate a neatly formatted full name."""
full_name = f"{first} {middle} {last}"
return full_name.title()
This version should work for people with middle names, but when we
test it, we see that we’ve broken the function for people with just a first and
last name.
This time, running pytest gives the following output:
$ pytest
========================= test session starts =========================
--snip--
1 test_name_function.py F [100%]
2 ============================== FAILURES ===============================
3 ________________________ test_first_last_name _________________________
def test_first_last_name():
"""Do names like 'Janis Joplin' work?"""
4 > formatted_name = get_formatted_name('janis', 'joplin')
5 E TypeError: get_formatted_name() missing 1 required positional
argument: 'last'
214 Chapter 11
