In this episode, special guest Adam Johnson joins the show and examines pytest-django, a popular plugin among Django developers. He highlights its advantages over the built-in unittest framework, including improved test management and debugging. Adam addresses transition challenges, evolving fixture practices, and offers tips for optimizing test performance. This episode is a concise guide for developers looking to enhance their testing strategies with pytest-django.

Links:

• pytest-django - a plugin for pytest that provides a set of useful tools for testing Django applications and projects.

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

pytest-metadata is described as a plugin for pytest that provides access to test session metadata. 
That is such a humble description for such a massively useful plugin. 
If you're already using pytest-html, you have pytest-metadata already installed, as pytest-metadata is one of the dependencies for pytest-html.
However, pytest-metadata is very useful even on its own.

Links:

• pytest-metadata - The plugin we're talking about in this episode
• pytest-base-url - Adds the base URL to the metadata.
• pytest-html - Displays the metadata at the start of each report. 
  • See S2:E6: pytest-html - a plugin that generates HTML reports for test results
• pytest-reporter-html1 - Presents metadata as part of the report.
• pytest-selenium - Adds the driver, capabilities, and remote server to the metadata.

If you've got other plugins that work well with pytest-metadata, please let me know.

Sponsored by: 

• Porkbun -- named the #1 domain registrar by USA Today from 2023 to 2025!
• Get a .app or.dev domain name for only $5.99 first year.

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

pytest-check is a pytest plugin that allows multiple failures per test.

Normally, a test function will fail and stop running with the first failed assert. That's totally fine for tons of kinds of software tests. However, there are times where you'd like to check more than one thing, and you'd really like to know the results of each check, even if one of them fails.

pytest-check allows multiple failed "checks" per test function, so you can see the whole picture of what's going wrong.

Links:

• pytest-check
• Top pytest plugins

Sponsored by: 

• Porkbun -- named the #1 domain registrar by USA Today from 2023 to 2025!
• Get a .app or.dev domain name for only $5.99 first year.

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

AI is helping people write code.  
Tests are one of those things that some people don't like to write.   

Can AI play a role in creating automated software tests?  
Well, yes. But it's a nuanced yes.  

Anthony Shaw comes on the show to discuss the topic and try to get AI to write some test for my very own cards project.

We discuss:

• The promise of AI writing your tests for you
• Downsides to not writing tests yourself
• Bad ways to generate tests
• Good ways to ask AI for help in writing tests
• Tricks to get better results while using copilot and other AI tools

Links:

• The cards project
• A video version of this discussion: Should AI write tests?

Sponsored by: 

• Porkbun -- named the #1 domain registrar by USA Today from 2023 to 2025!
• Get a .app or.dev domain name for only $5.99 first year.

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

pytest-repeat 

• is a pytest plugin that makes it easy to repeat a single test, or multiple tests, a specific number of times.  
• works fine on Python 3.14
• is tested on Python 3.9-3.14
• probably works fine still on 3.7 & 3.8

This episode also discusses the attempted April Fools episode.

Links:

• pytest-repeat
• The April Fools episode: Python 3.14 won't repeat with pytest-repeat
  
  

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

pytest-repeat is a pytest plugin that makes it easy to repeat a single test, or multiple tests, a specific number of times.  

Note: This was an April Fools attempt, so the statement ...
"Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with Python 3.14, even though there is no rational reason why it shouldn't work." 
... is NOT true.

Listen to the NEXT episode to get an explanation

Links:

• pytest-repeat
• Next episode: pytest-repeat - works fine on Python 3.14

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

pytest-html has got to be one of my all time favorite plugins. 
pytest-html is a plugin for pytest that generates a HTML report for test results. 
This episode digs into some of the super coolness of pytest-html.

• pytest-html
• repo readme with screenshot
• enhancing reports
• pytest-metadata

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Markdown reports as either text or markdown tables.
Two fun plugins discussed.

Links:

• pytest-md-report
• pytest-md
• Top pytest Plugins

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

This episode is a replay of a 2021 interview I did with Michael Foord.
We lost Michael in January, and I'd like to revisit this interview as a tribute. 

Michael Foord was a pivotal figure in the Python community and the creator of the mock library that's now unittest.mock. 
But he did so much more as well. 
His contributions continue to resonate within the developer community. 
This interview is just a small peek at his influence. 

In this episode

• Introduction to Michael Foord
• The Mock Library Origins
• Mocking and Testing Philosophy
• Career Path and Consulting
• Understanding Mocking
• The Power of Patch
• Testing Strategies and Design
• Mocking External Dependencies
• Teaching Testing and Mocking

python.org has put up an "In memoriam" page for Michael Foord, and many people have shared stories and memories.

Links:

• In memoriam: Michael Foord 1974-2025
• 30 best practices for software development and testing

pytest-mock is currently the #3 pytest plugin. 
pytest-mock is a wrapper around unittest.mock.

In this episode:

• Why the pytest-mock plugin is awesome
• What is mocking, patching, and monkey patching
• What, if any, is the difference between mock, fake, spy, stub. 
• Why we might need these in testing
• Some history of mock in Python and how mock became unittest.mock
• From unittest.mock
  • patch.object
  • patch.object with autospec
  • using these as context managers
• pytest-mock:
  • The mocker fixture 
  • Cleanup in teardown
  • Using mocker.patch, mocker.spy, and mocker.stub
  • Why it's awesome and why you might want to use it over straight unittest.mock

Links:

• top pytest plugins list
• pytest-mock documentation
• unittest.mock
• Podcast episode discussing unittest.mock with Michael Foord
• monkeypatch

Help support the show AND learn pytest: 

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.