Using Sys.Argv's With Pytest

[Smilin-Dominator]

Hi Everyone,

Im a beginner at python, I wanted to make a program that'll take sys_args and generate a password.
I wanted to use pytest to debug it, through github's workflow. (this is one file, the other's for flask). And i tried the following
pytest salt.py make 1 but it says;

================================================== no tests ran in 0.02s =================================================== ERROR: file or directory not found: make

Here's my code:

def main():
    proceed = sys.argv[1]
    if proceed == 'make':
        count = int(sys.argv[2])
        make_name(count)
    else:
        ti= time.time()
        name = sys.argv[2]
        count = sys.argv[3]
        if count == 'all':
            count = 'all'
            make_salt(count, name)
        else:
            make_salt(count, name)
        print(f"Time Taken: {round(time.time() - ti, 2)}s")

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

Pytest is a own cli program with own cli handling

If you want to test a cli you have to do what everyone else is doing and enable your main function to take an alternative to sys.argv

I can elaborate once I get back to the computer later if necessary

[Smilin-Dominator]

Hi @RonnyPfannschmidt ,
Thanks for the reply. I'm not entirely sure on how to do that, so could you please elaborate whenever you're free.
Thanks!

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

a common pattern is

def main(args=None):
    if args is None:
        args = sys.argv[1:]
    ....

then other code can just call

main(["make","all"])

[Smilin-Dominator]

It worked, thanks alot!

[hughesadam87]

I wrote a small blog post on this topic that provides a miniimal working example for the above and how to test

https://hughesadam87.medium.com/dead-simple-pytest-and-argparse-d1dbb6affbc3