Using namedtuple to group py.test fixtures

Everyone loves a good py.test fixture. Those things are so flexible. Sometimes it’s desirable to have a fixture return a function, like this:

@pytest.fixture
def get_x():
    # some code
    x = 1
    def closure_fn():
        return x
    return closure_fn

def test_something(get_x):
    x = get_x()
    assert x == 1

After some time, the number of function-returning fixtures gets to the point where our test function signatures start to get a bit over the top:

def test_something(fixture_a,
                   fixture_b,
                   get_x,
                   get_y,
                   get_z):
    x = get_x()
    y = get_y()
    z = get_z()
    assert x, y, z == 1, 2, 3

Because py.test fixtures can return arbitrary Python objects and also support dependencies on other fixtures (fixture functions support the same injection syntax as test functions), we can just use a Python datastructure of some type to group our get_* functions into a single fixture. The “grouping” fixture and its usage could look like this:

@pytest.fixture
def getters(get_x, get_y, get_z):
    return get_x, get_y, get_z

def test_more_things(getters):
    get_x, get_y, get_z = getters
    x = get_x()
    # ...

But this way, we’d need to remember in which order we packed out getters when we want to call them from the test function. Surely there’s a better way. This is Python, of course there’s a better way! We could use a dictionary, which would mean we could address our getter functions by name, but then our calling syntax would be getters['get_x']() which is a bit opaque. We can use a little namedtuple magic to get prettier calling syntax, like this:

import collections

@pytest.fixture
def getters(get_x, get_y, get_z):
    dict_ = {
        'get_x': get_x,
        'get_y': get_y,
        'get_z': get_z,
    }
    nt = collections.namedtuple('getters', dict_.keys())
    return nt(**dict_)

def test_more_things(getters):
    x = getters.get_x()
    # ...

This way, we get saner calling syntax and don’t have to worry about unpacking our groups in every test function. Wunderbar!