Introduction to pytest

Hello everyone! I’m Andy Knight, the Automation Panda. I’ve been a Software Engineer in Test, a Developer Advocate, and even Director of Test Automation University. But if you know me, you know that I’m also a bona fide Pythonistia.

I love Python. It’s an incredible programming language with a wonderful community. You can do just about anything in Python, and that includes testing.

pytest is the most popular test framework in Python. It’s also my favorite test framework in any language. You can use pytest to automate any kind of functional tests, including unit tests, API tests, and UI tests. pytest is also extendable with several open source plugins.

This course is an introduction to pytest. We’ll start off with the basics of setting up a project, automating basic test cases, and executing them locally. Then, we will learn about advanced pytest features like fixtures, parameters, and plugins. We will also automate more serious tests for APIs with requests and for web UIs with Playwright.

This will be a hands-on course. You will create a new Python project and progressively add new code to it with each chapter. I also created a GitHub repository that contains all the example code for the course, so if you get stuck, you can compare your code to mine.

• Each chapter has a corresponding branch in the repository.
• The “main” branch contains the completed code for the end of the course.
• The “README” file contains setup and troubleshooting instructions.

Before taking this course, you should have basic Python programming skills. That way, you can focus on learning the pytest framework more than wrestling with Python itself. If you want advice on how to start learning Python, please check out my article, "How Do I Start Learning Python?" on AutomationPanda.com. You can also take the Python Programming course at Test Automation University. I’ll provide links to everything below.

Whether you are a tester who needs to use Python for automation or a Pythonista who needs to pick up some testing skills, I hope you’ll learn a lot from this course. Let’s start pytest-ing.