How to write and report assertions in tests

Asserting with the assert statement

pytest allows you to use the standard Python assert for verifying expectations and values in Python tests. For example, you can write the following:

# content of test_assert1.py
def f():
    return 3


def test_function():
    assert f() == 4

to assert that your function returns a certain value. If this assertion fails you will see the return value of the function call:

$ pytest test_assert1.py
=========================== test session starts ============================
platform linux -- Python 3.x.y, pytest-8.x.y, pluggy-1.x.y
rootdir: /home/sweet/project
collected 1 item

test_assert1.py F                                                    [100%]

================================= FAILURES =================================
______________________________ test_function _______________________________

    def test_function():
>       assert f() == 4
E       assert 3 == 4
E        +  where 3 = f()

test_assert1.py:6: AssertionError
========================= short test summary info ==========================
FAILED test_assert1.py::test_function - assert 3 == 4
============================ 1 failed in 0.12s =============================

pytest has support for showing the values of the most common subexpressions including calls, attributes, comparisons, and binary and unary operators. (See Demo of Python failure reports with pytest). This allows you to use the idiomatic python constructs without boilerplate code while not losing introspection information.

If a message is specified with the assertion like this:

assert a % 2 == 0, "value was odd, should be even"

it is printed alongside the assertion introspection in the traceback.

See Assertion introspection details for more information on assertion introspection.

Assertions about expected exceptions

In order to write assertions about raised exceptions, you can use pytest.raises() as a context manager like this:

import pytest


def test_zero_division():
    with pytest.raises(ZeroDivisionError):
        1 / 0

and if you need to have access to the actual exception info you may use:

def test_recursion_depth():
    with pytest.raises(RuntimeError) as excinfo:

        def f():
            f()

        f()
    assert "maximum recursion" in str(excinfo.value)

excinfo is an ExceptionInfo instance, which is a wrapper around the actual exception raised. The main attributes of interest are .type, .value and .traceback.

Note that pytest.raises will match the exception type or any subclasses (like the standard except statement). If you want to check if a block of code is raising an exact exception type, you need to check that explicitly:

def test_foo_not_implemented():
    def foo():
        raise NotImplementedError

    with pytest.raises(RuntimeError) as excinfo:
        foo()
    assert excinfo.type is RuntimeError

The pytest.raises() call will succeed, even though the function raises NotImplementedError, because NotImplementedError is a subclass of RuntimeError; however the following assert statement will catch the problem.

Matching exception messages

You can pass a match keyword parameter to the context-manager to test that a regular expression matches on the string representation of an exception (similar to the TestCase.assertRaisesRegex method from unittest):

import pytest


def myfunc():
    raise ValueError("Exception 123 raised")


def test_match():
    with pytest.raises(ValueError, match=r".* 123 .*"):
        myfunc()

Notes:

  • The match parameter is matched with the re.search() function, so in the above example match='123' would have worked as well.

  • The match parameter also matches against PEP-678 __notes__.

Matching exception groups

You can also use the excinfo.group_contains() method to test for exceptions returned as part of an ExceptionGroup:

def test_exception_in_group():
    with pytest.raises(ExceptionGroup) as excinfo:
        raise ExceptionGroup(
            "Group message",
            [
                RuntimeError("Exception 123 raised"),
            ],
        )
    assert excinfo.group_contains(RuntimeError, match=r".* 123 .*")
    assert not excinfo.group_contains(TypeError)

The optional match keyword parameter works the same way as for pytest.raises().

By default group_contains() will recursively search for a matching exception at any level of nested ExceptionGroup instances. You can specify a depth keyword parameter if you only want to match an exception at a specific level; exceptions contained directly in the top ExceptionGroup would match depth=1.

def test_exception_in_group_at_given_depth():
    with pytest.raises(ExceptionGroup) as excinfo:
        raise ExceptionGroup(
            "Group message",
            [
                RuntimeError(),
                ExceptionGroup(
                    "Nested group",
                    [
                        TypeError(),
                    ],
                ),
            ],
        )
    assert excinfo.group_contains(RuntimeError, depth=1)
    assert excinfo.group_contains(TypeError, depth=2)
    assert not excinfo.group_contains(RuntimeError, depth=2)
    assert not excinfo.group_contains(TypeError, depth=1)

Alternate form (legacy)

There is an alternate form where you pass a function that will be executed, along *args and **kwargs, and pytest.raises() will execute the function with the arguments and assert that the given exception is raised:

def func(x):
    if x <= 0:
        raise ValueError("x needs to be larger than zero")


pytest.raises(ValueError, func, x=-1)

The reporter will provide you with helpful output in case of failures such as no exception or wrong exception.

This form was the original pytest.raises() API, developed before the with statement was added to the Python language. Nowadays, this form is rarely used, with the context-manager form (using with) being considered more readable. Nonetheless, this form is fully supported and not deprecated in any way.

xfail mark and pytest.raises

It is also possible to specify a raises argument to pytest.mark.xfail, which checks that the test is failing in a more specific way than just having any exception raised:

def f():
    raise IndexError()


@pytest.mark.xfail(raises=IndexError)
def test_f():
    f()

This will only “xfail” if the test fails by raising IndexError or subclasses.

  • Using pytest.mark.xfail with the raises parameter is probably better for something like documenting unfixed bugs (where the test describes what “should” happen) or bugs in dependencies.

  • Using pytest.raises() is likely to be better for cases where you are testing exceptions your own code is deliberately raising, which is the majority of cases.

Assertions about expected warnings

You can check that code raises a particular warning using pytest.warns.

Making use of context-sensitive comparisons

pytest has rich support for providing context-sensitive information when it encounters comparisons. For example:

# content of test_assert2.py
def test_set_comparison():
    set1 = set("1308")
    set2 = set("8035")
    assert set1 == set2

if you run this module:

$ pytest test_assert2.py
=========================== test session starts ============================
platform linux -- Python 3.x.y, pytest-8.x.y, pluggy-1.x.y
rootdir: /home/sweet/project
collected 1 item

test_assert2.py F                                                    [100%]

================================= FAILURES =================================
___________________________ test_set_comparison ____________________________

    def test_set_comparison():
        set1 = set("1308")
        set2 = set("8035")
>       assert set1 == set2
E       AssertionError: assert {'0', '1', '3', '8'} == {'0', '3', '5', '8'}
E
E         Extra items in the left set:
E         '1'
E         Extra items in the right set:
E         '5'
E         Use -v to get more diff

test_assert2.py:4: AssertionError
========================= short test summary info ==========================
FAILED test_assert2.py::test_set_comparison - AssertionError: assert {'0'...
============================ 1 failed in 0.12s =============================

Special comparisons are done for a number of cases:

  • comparing long strings: a context diff is shown

  • comparing long sequences: first failing indices

  • comparing dicts: different entries

See the reporting demo for many more examples.

Defining your own explanation for failed assertions

It is possible to add your own detailed explanations by implementing the pytest_assertrepr_compare hook.

pytest_assertrepr_compare(config, op, left, right)[source]

Return explanation for comparisons in failing assert expressions.

Return None for no custom explanation, otherwise return a list of strings. The strings will be joined by newlines but any newlines in a string will be escaped. Note that all but the first line will be indented slightly, the intention is for the first line to be a summary.

Parameters:
  • config (Config) – The pytest config object.

  • op (str) – The operator, e.g. "==", "!=", "not in".

  • left (object) – The left operand.

  • right (object) – The right operand.

Use in conftest plugins

Any conftest file can implement this hook. For a given item, only conftest files in the item’s directory and its parent directories are consulted.

As an example consider adding the following hook in a conftest.py file which provides an alternative explanation for Foo objects:

# content of conftest.py
from test_foocompare import Foo


def pytest_assertrepr_compare(op, left, right):
    if isinstance(left, Foo) and isinstance(right, Foo) and op == "==":
        return [
            "Comparing Foo instances:",
            f"   vals: {left.val} != {right.val}",
        ]

now, given this test module:

# content of test_foocompare.py
class Foo:
    def __init__(self, val):
        self.val = val

    def __eq__(self, other):
        return self.val == other.val


def test_compare():
    f1 = Foo(1)
    f2 = Foo(2)
    assert f1 == f2

you can run the test module and get the custom output defined in the conftest file:

$ pytest -q test_foocompare.py
F                                                                    [100%]
================================= FAILURES =================================
_______________________________ test_compare _______________________________

    def test_compare():
        f1 = Foo(1)
        f2 = Foo(2)
>       assert f1 == f2
E       assert Comparing Foo instances:
E            vals: 1 != 2

test_foocompare.py:12: AssertionError
========================= short test summary info ==========================
FAILED test_foocompare.py::test_compare - assert Comparing Foo instances:
1 failed in 0.12s

Assertion introspection details

Reporting details about a failing assertion is achieved by rewriting assert statements before they are run. Rewritten assert statements put introspection information into the assertion failure message. pytest only rewrites test modules directly discovered by its test collection process, so asserts in supporting modules which are not themselves test modules will not be rewritten.

You can manually enable assertion rewriting for an imported module by calling register_assert_rewrite before you import it (a good place to do that is in your root conftest.py).

For further information, Benjamin Peterson wrote up Behind the scenes of pytest’s new assertion rewriting.

Assertion rewriting caches files on disk

pytest will write back the rewritten modules to disk for caching. You can disable this behavior (for example to avoid leaving stale .pyc files around in projects that move files around a lot) by adding this to the top of your conftest.py file:

import sys

sys.dont_write_bytecode = True

Note that you still get the benefits of assertion introspection, the only change is that the .pyc files won’t be cached on disk.

Additionally, rewriting will silently skip caching if it cannot write new .pyc files, i.e. in a read-only filesystem or a zipfile.

Disabling assert rewriting

pytest rewrites test modules on import by using an import hook to write new pyc files. Most of the time this works transparently. However, if you are working with the import machinery yourself, the import hook may interfere.

If this is the case you have two options:

  • Disable rewriting for a specific module by adding the string PYTEST_DONT_REWRITE to its docstring.

  • Disable rewriting for all modules by using --assert=plain.