Why do I only get a function as a return value by using a fixture (from pytest) in a test script?

Question

I want to write test functions for my code and decided to use pytest. I had a look into this tutorial: https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/testing-python-applications-with-pytest

My real code involves another script, written by me, so I made an example, which also creates the same problem, but does not rely on my other code.

@pytest.fixture()
def example():
    value = 10
    return value

def test_value(example):
    print(example)
    assert(example == 10)

test_value(example)

When I run my script with this toy example, the print returns a function:

<function example at 0x0391E540>

and the assertion fails.

If I try to call example() with the parenthesis, I get this:

Failed: Fixture "example_chunks" called directly. Fixtures are not meant to be called directly, but are created automatically when test functions request them as parameters. See https://docs.pytest.org/en/stable/fixture.html for more information about fixtures, and https://docs.pytest.org/en/stable/deprecations.html#calling-fixtures-directly about how to update your code.

I am sure, I am missing something important here, but searching google did not help me, which is why I hope somebody here can provide some assistance.

Answer 1

1. Remove this line from your script

test_value(example)

2. Run your script file with pytest file.py

Fixtures will be automatically resolved by pytest

In your example you run code directly and fixtures are just simple functions