Python unit test with base and sub class

You can add __test__ = False in BaseTest class, but if you add it, be aware that you must add __test__ = True in derived classes to be able to run tests.

import unittest

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
    __test__ = False

    def testCommon(self):
        print 'Calling BaseTest:testCommon'
        value = 5
        self.assertEquals(value, 5)

class SubTest1(BaseTest):
    __test__ = True

    def testSub1(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest1:testSub1'
        sub = 3
        self.assertEquals(sub, 3)


class SubTest2(BaseTest):
    __test__ = True

    def testSub2(self):
        print 'Calling SubTest2:testSub2'
        sub = 4
        self.assertEquals(sub, 4)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Here is a solution that uses only documented unittest features, and that avoids having a "skip" status in your test results:

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):

    def __init__(self, methodName='runTest'):
        if self.__class__ is BaseTest:
            # don't run these tests in the abstract base implementation
            methodName = 'runNoTestsInBaseClass'
        super().__init__(methodName)

    def runNoTestsInBaseClass(self):
        pass

    def testCommon(self):
        # everything else as in the original question

How it works: per the unittest.TestCase documentation, "Each instance of TestCase will run a single base method: the method named methodName." The default "runTests" runs all the test* methods on the class—that's how TestCase instances normally work. But when running in the abstract base class itself, you can simply override that behavior with a method that does nothing.

A side effect is your test count will increase by one: the runNoTestsInBaseClass "test" gets counted as a successful test when it's run on BaseClass.

(This also works in Python 2.7, if you're still on that. Just change super() to super(BaseTest, self).)

As of Python 3.2, you can add a test_loader function to a module to control which tests (if any) are found by the test discovery mechanism.

For example, the following will only load the original poster's SubTest1 and SubTest2 Test Cases, ignoring Base:

def load_tests(loader, standard_tests, pattern):
    suite = TestSuite()
    suite.addTests([SubTest1, SubTest2])
    return suite

It ought to be possible to iterate over standard_tests (a TestSuite containing the tests the default loader found) and copy all but Base to suite instead, but the nested nature of TestSuite.__iter__ makes that a lot more complicated.

So this is kind of an old thread but I came across this problem today and thought of my own hack for it. It uses a decorator that makes the values of the functions None when acessed through the base class. Don't need to worry about setup and setupclass because if the baseclass has no tests they won't run.

import types
import unittest


class FunctionValueOverride(object):
    def __init__(self, cls, default, override=None):
        self.cls = cls
        self.default = default
        self.override = override

    def __get__(self, obj, klass):
        if klass == self.cls:
            return self.override
        else:
            if obj:
                return types.MethodType(self.default, obj)
            else:
                return self.default


def fixture(cls):
    for t in vars(cls):
        if not callable(getattr(cls, t)) or t[:4] != "test":
            continue
        setattr(cls, t, FunctionValueOverride(cls, getattr(cls, t)))
    return cls


@fixture
class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def testCommon(self):
        print('Calling BaseTest:testCommon')
        value = 5
        self.assertEqual(value, 5)


class SubTest1(BaseTest):
    def testSub1(self):
        print('Calling SubTest1:testSub1')
        sub = 3
        self.assertEqual(sub, 3)


class SubTest2(BaseTest):

    def testSub2(self):
        print('Calling SubTest2:testSub2')
        sub = 4
        self.assertEqual(sub, 4)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()