I have installed a third-party Python package (let's say it's named pkg) which contains pytest tests in a module pkg.test.
Typically, one invokes pytest from the command line or IDE on a directory or file. However, how can I programmatically run these tests from my own Python code?
I would like to do something like the following, where I use a hypothetical pytest.run_tests_in_module function:
import pytest
pytest.run_tests_in_module('pkg.tests') # runs tests inside pkg.tests
There is a section in pytest documentation that directly answers your question: "Calling pytest from Python code".
The function is pytest.main(), and you can pass the same arguments you would pass via the command line.
To pass a python package as an argument instead of a directory, you may use --pyargs. It will force pytest to perform regular import to locate the package. So the full invocation for your example above will look like this:
pytest.main(['--pyargs', 'pkg.tests'])