nose-easy-init

A nose plugin, enabled by default, which executes a user-defined initialization function prior to nose collecting or running any tests. The user specifies the python module that contains the initialization function, main, in an environment variable.

Use one of two environment variables to specify the module:

NOSE_INIT_MODULE=app.tests.nose_init
NOSE_INIT_PATH=/path/to/my/app/tests/nose_init.py

Then, run your nose tests as usual.

Example initialization module

Let's assume that we've named our initialization module nose_init.py and saved it in /path/to/my/app/tests/nose_init.py. That file must contain a main function. For example:

"""
Initialization script which is imported when ``nosetests`` is run.
The main function will be executed before any other application code
is imported.
"""

def main():
    """nose_easy_init will call this before each ``nosetests`` run."""

    setup_my_test_environment()
    setup_my_test_database()
    etc()

Then, before running nosetests, set one of two environment variables to specify the module:

NOSE_INIT_MODULE=app.tests.nose_init
NOSE_INIT_PATH=/path/to/my/app/tests/nose_init.py

Note that if both the environment variables are defined, the filesystem path, NOSE_INIT_PATH, will take precedence over NOSE_INIT_MODULE.