Why does `@pytest.fixture(autouse=True)` not populate namespace of test function?

[ego-thales]

Hi everyone 👋

I'm quite new to pytest and I love it, so... thanks!! I recently understood -- or so I though -- how to use @pytest.fixture(autouse=True) with the setup and teeardown logics separated with yield .

However, I was surprised to discover that the yield statement does not add the fixture to the namespace of the test function. For example, I expected the following to work.

# conftest.py
@pytest.fixture(autouse=True)
def tmp():
    print("setup")
    yield "tmp"
    print("teardown")
    return

# test_file.py
def test_autouse_in_namespace():
    assert tmp == "tmp"

But as you probably know, it fails.

_______________ test_autouse_in_namespace _______________

    def test_autouse_in_namespace():
>       assert tmp == "tmp"
E       NameError: name 'tmp' is not defined

test/test_file.py:2: NameError
----------------- Captured stdout setup -----------------
setup
--------------- Captured stdout teardown ----------------
teardown

My questions are then:

1. Is there a good reason for pytest not to behave like this?
2. Is there an elegant pythonic way to emulate this?

Thanks for your time!

[The-Compiler]

Moving this to a discussion, please use those for questions and only use issues for things that are actionable in some way.

pytest doesn't do this because there is no way to magically "add something to the namespace" when you call a function. If you need the value of a fixture, you will need to have it as an argument.