This is a helper to enable testing AiiDA plugins with pytest. The main purpose is to create a fixture which sets up a temporary AiiDA database and user, and simplify setting up the computers and calculations.

To get started, create a tests folder where your pytest tests will be located. In conftests.py, you need to write

from aiida_pytest import *

This defines the configure and configure_with_daemon fixtures.

Also, you need to create an empty .aiida in the folder where you want to run your tests. Then, you need to export AIIDA_PATH='.' to make sure aiida is using this config folder. This is to make sure that the tests create a local configuration (that will be destroyed after the test) instead of running in your main AiiDA configuration.

Note: aiida-pytest is not compatible with the aiida-xdist plugin, since the fixtures with scope=session are then called for each running worker.

Tests with aiida-pytest are defined and run exactly like "regular" pytest tests. If a test needs the AiiDA database, it should use the configure fixture. If the test also requires the Daemon to run, it should use the configure_with_daemon fixture. Note that, since certain AiiDA import statements require the database backend to be set, these imports should be done inside the test function.

After the tests have run, the code will wait for you to press Enter before deleting the testing database and repository. This gives you the opportunity to manually inspect the final state. If you want to avoid this step (for example in a CI system), pass the --quiet-wipe flag to py.test.