How to print to console in pytest?

Using -s option will print output of all functions, which may be too much.

If you need particular output, the doc page you mentioned offers few suggestions:

1. Insert assert False, "dumb assert to make PyTest print my stuff" at the end of your function, and you will see your output due to failed test.

2. You have special object passed to you by PyTest, and you can write the output into a file to inspect it later, like

   def test_good1(capsys):
       for i in range(5):
           print i
       out, err = capsys.readouterr()
       open("err.txt", "w").write(err)
       open("out.txt", "w").write(out)
   

   You can open the out and err files in a separate tab and let editor automatically refresh it for you, or do a simple py.test; cat out.txt shell command to run your test.

That is rather hackish way to do stuff, but may be it is the stuff you need: after all, TDD means you mess with stuff and leave it clean and silent when it’s ready :-).

I needed to print important warning about skipped tests exactly when PyTest muted literally everything.

I didn’t want to fail a test to send a signal, so I did a hack as follow:

def test_2_YellAboutBrokenAndMutedTests():
    import atexit
    def report():
        print C_patch.tidy_text("""
In silent mode PyTest breaks low level stream structure I work with, so
I cannot test if my functionality work fine. I skipped corresponding tests.
Run `py.test -s` to make sure everything is tested.""")
    if sys.stdout != sys.__stdout__:
        atexit.register(report)

The atexit module allows me to print stuff after PyTest released the output streams. The output looks as follow:

============================= test session starts ==============================
platform linux2 -- Python 2.7.3, pytest-2.9.2, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.3.1
rootdir: /media/Storage/henaro/smyth/Alchemist2-git/sources/C_patch, inifile: 
collected 15 items 

test_C_patch.py .....ssss....s.

===================== 10 passed, 5 skipped in 0.15 seconds =====================
In silent mode PyTest breaks low level stream structure I work with, so
I cannot test if my functionality work fine. I skipped corresponding tests.
Run `py.test -s` to make sure everything is tested.
~/.../sources/C_patch$

Message is printed even when PyTest is in silent mode, and is not printed if you run stuff with py.test -s, so everything is tested nicely already.

According to the pytest docs, pytest --capture=sys should work. If you want to capture standard out inside a test, refer to the capsys fixture.

Use the -s option:

pytest -s

Detailed answer

From the docs:

During test execution any output sent to stdout and stderr is captured. If a test or a setup method fails its according captured output will usually be shown along with the failure traceback.

pytest has the option --capture=method in which method is per-test capturing method, and could be one of the following: fd, sys or no. pytest also has the option -s which is a shortcut for --capture=no, and this is the option that will allow you to see your print statements in the console.

pytest --capture=no     # show print statements in console
pytest -s               # equivalent to previous command

Setting capturing methods or disabling capturing

There are two ways in which pytest can perform capturing:

1. file descriptor (FD) level capturing (default): All writes going to the operating system file descriptors 1 and 2 will be captured.

2. sys level capturing: Only writes to Python files sys.stdout and sys.stderr will be captured. No capturing of writes to filedescriptors is performed.

pytest -s            # disable all capturing
pytest --capture=sys # replace sys.stdout/stderr with in-mem files
pytest --capture=fd  # also point filedescriptors 1 and 2 to temp file

I originally came in here to find how to make PyTest print in VSCode’s console while running/debugging the unit test from there. This can be done with the following launch.json configuration. Given .venv the virtual environment folder.

    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "PyTest",
            "type": "python",
            "request": "launch",
            "stopOnEntry": false,
            "pythonPath": "${config:python.pythonPath}",
            "module": "pytest",
            "args": [
                "-sv"
            ],
            "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
            "env": {},
            "envFile": "${workspaceRoot}/.venv",
            "debugOptions": [
                "WaitOnAbnormalExit",
                "WaitOnNormalExit",
                "RedirectOutput"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

This is the cleanest way I know to print a single statement to sys.stdout (without artificially making your test fail or enabling the -s option) – you get to see the specific output you want and nothing more:

1. Add the in-built parameter capsys to your test function. (This means that you add capsys to the list of parameters, e.g.

def test_function(existing_parameters, capsys):

2. In your code, simply insert:

with capsys.disabled():
   print("this output will not be captured and go straight to sys.stdout")

See https://buildmedia.readthedocs.org/media/pdf/pytest/latest/pytest.pdf (2.11 How to capture stdout/stderr output).

You can also set this via the Pycharm GUI: go to Run > Edit Configurations. There, select the test you want to enable print statements for and add -s to the Additional Arguments field.

I do it like this, because while I primarily use the Pycharm debugger to debug my pytest functions (i.e. via the GUI), my specific use case also requires me to know what’s going on elsewhere in my code and print statements can come in handy for that.

I generally use this command:-

pytest -v -rs --html=report.html --self-contained-html test_Suite.py -s

the above command also generates a report.html file where all the print statements are getting captured and saved. And the -s at the last will show the print statements into the terminal too.

There are already a lot of good answers, but I want to share why I wasn’t able to get logs when I ran pytest.

One important note is that each test case must start with the test_ prefix when you write the functions. Without that, there will be no print statements when using pytest.

As for the command, I use the following one to get very comprehensive logs:

python -m pytest -v -rs <particular_file.py> -s -o log_cli-level=DEBUG

By making sure you have the right function names and using my command, you should be able to see console logs for sure.

If you are working with pytest.ini, consider using:

[pytest]
...
addopts = --capture=no
...

This works well if you are running your tests from an IDE extension which is based on you pytest.ini

without artificially making your test fail or enabling the -s option

import warnings

text = "asdf" 

warnings.warn(UserWarning("{}".format(text)))