Debugging failing tests

When a GUI-related test fails, it can sometimes be hard to find out where the culprit lies. To aid with debugging such tests, the qtbot fixture allows to stop the current test and to take screenshots of widgets.

Stopping the current test

By calling pytestqt.qtbot.QtBot.stop(), the current test gets interrupted. After closing all visible windows, qtbot attempts to restore the previous state and the test continues to run.

Note

If you use Xvfb or the offscreen platform plugin (e.g. via QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen), remember to disable those to see the windows. With the pytest-xvfb plugin, this is possible by passing --no-xvfb to pytest.

Taking screenshots

Added in version 4.1.

Via pytestqt.qtbot.QtBot.screenshot(), a screenshot of a given widget can be taken. That screenshot is then saved into a temporary directory provided by pytest. For example, this test:

from pytestqt.qt_compat import qt_api


def test_screenshot(qtbot):
    button = qt_api.QtWidgets.QPushButton()
    button.setText("Hello World!")
    qtbot.add_widget(button)
    path = qtbot.screenshot(button)
    assert False, path  # show the path and fail the test

would result in the following file at a location like /tmp/pytest-of-USER/pytest-N/test_screenshot0/screenshot_QPushButton.png:

_images/button.png

The filename is generated based on the following parts:

  • screenshot

  • The class of the widget (e.g. QWidget or QPushButton)

  • The widget’s objectName(), if set

  • The given suffix, if passed

  • A counter to make the filename unique, if another screenshot already exists