How to pass command line arguments to pytest tests running in vscode

Question

I've written tests to be run by pytest in a vscode project. The configuration file .vscode/settings.json allow passing additional command line parameters to pytest using:

    "python.testing.pytestArgs": [
        "test/",
        "--exitfirst",
        "--verbose"
    ],

How can I also pass custom script arguments to the test script itself? like invoking pytest from the command line as:

pytest --exitfirst --verbose test/ --test_arg1  --test_arg2

Does this answer your question? How to pass arguments in pytest by command line — quamrana
This post answers the question how pass parameters to test scripts. It is NOT the subject of this post. I'm interested in how to the same in vscode — Uri
I’m sorry I don’t see the difference. You quote a pytest command line in your question and there are example command lines with parameters in the answers in the link. — quamrana
Running pytest from the command line does not allow debugging the test inside vscode. Invoking from the command line allow one drop into pdb for stepping through the code. The ability to use vscode interactive debugger is far superior. — Uri

Uri Uri · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-22T03:28:45

After much experimentation I finally found how to do it. What I needed was to pass user name and password to my script in order to allow the code to log into a test server. My test looked like this:
my_module_test.py

import pytest
import my_module

def login_test(username, password):
    instance = my_module.Login(username, password)
    # ...more...

conftest.py

import pytest

def pytest_addoption(parser):
    parser.addoption('--username', action='store', help='Repository user')
    parser.addoption('--password', action='store', help='Repository password')

def pytest_generate_tests(metafunc):
    username = metafunc.config.option.username
    if 'username' in metafunc.fixturenames and username is not None:
        metafunc.parametrize('username', [username])

    password = metafunc.config.option.password
    if 'password' in metafunc.fixturenames and password is not None:
        metafunc.parametrize('password', [password])

Then in my settings file I can use:
.vscode/settings.json

{
    // ...more...
    "python.testing.autoTestDiscoverOnSaveEnabled": true,
    "python.testing.unittestEnabled": false,
    "python.testing.nosetestsEnabled": false,
    "python.testing.pytestEnabled": true,
    "python.testing.pytestArgs": [
        "--exitfirst",
        "--verbose",
        "test/",
        "--username=myname",
        "--password=secret",
    // ...more...
    ],
}

An alternative way is to use pytest.ini file instead:
pytest.ini

[pytest]
junit_family=legacy
addopts = --username=myname --password=secret

How to pass command line arguments to pytest tests running in vscode

2 Answers