How to get VSCode Python extension recognize submodules when running unittest test cases?

Question

Problem

I cannot get VSCode/unittest to recognize submodules (i.e., common.nested_module in the example in background) that I wrote unittests for.

VSCode discovers the tests cases and executes those in test_my_module.py but complains that there is no module common.nested_module on the import statement line in test_nested_module.py (in Output: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'common.nested_module').

I added print(sys.path) to the executed test case and in Python Test log I even get the following output when adding .env file as described below in What I tried 2.:

test_get_version (test_my_module.TestCase1) ... ['/workspaces/test_project/project/tests', '/workspaces/test_project/project/src', '/workspaces/test_project/project/common', '/usr/local/lib/python39.zip', '/usr/local/lib/python3.9', '/usr/local/lib/python3.9/lib-dynload', '/home/vscode/.local/lib/python3.9/site-packages', '/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages']

Background

Following the PyPA tutorial for packaging and distribution I created a project structure, leaving out other details (e.g., README.md), as follows:

project
   |--src
      |--common
          |-- __init__.py
          |-- nested_module.py
      |-- __init__.py
      |-- my_module.py
   |--tests
      |--__init__.py
      |--test_my_module.py
      |--test_nested_module.py

Settings related to testing in settings.json:

{
    "python.testing.unittestArgs": [
        "-v",
        "-s",
        "${workspaceFolder}/project/tests",
        "-p",
        "test_*.py"
    ],
    "python.testing.cwd": "project/src",
    "python.testing.pytestEnabled": false,
    "python.testing.unittestEnabled": true,
}

What I tried

Adding the following to my __init__.py in project/tests as well as to test_nested_module.py as suggested here.


import os
import sys
PROJECT_PATH = os.getcwd()
SOURCE_PATH = os.path.join(
    PROJECT_PATH,"project/src/common"
)
sys.path.append(SOURCE_PATH)

Adding an .env to project containing the following while adding "python.envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/afinad/.env" to settings.json similar to what was suggested here.

PYTHONPATH = ./common

Adding -t option with ${workspaceFolder}/project/src and . to settings.json for python.testing.unittestArgs as sggested here:


"python.testing.unittestArgs": [
        "-v",
        "-s",
        "${workspaceFolder}/project/tests",
        "-p",
        "test_*.py",
        "-t",
        "${workspaceFolder}/project/src"
    ],

Running python3 -m unittest discover after changing into ./tests in terminal gives me:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'my_module'

Thanks for taking time to read. Any help is much appreciated!

Does `{WorkspaceFolder}` point to `workspaces/test_project`? — zerocukor287, Sep 19 '21 at 08:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 19 '21 at 13:31

After nearly two days of trying different combinations of various suggested solutions I found my mistake. It seems, newbie as I am, that I felt for the name shadowing trap.

Originally, I intended to have the same folder structure in tests as I had in src. However, when I figured that the test_my_module.py worked, I moved the test_nested_module.py from tests/common to tests but I did not remove the folder tests/common. This caused, as it seems, the ModuleNotFoundError, because after removing the folder, it works as expected.

I hope this will save others some time.

How to get VSCode Python extension recognize submodules when running unittest test cases?

1 Answers1