Fixturelevel

Fixturelevel is a term used in software testing to describe the level of a test fixture’s lifecycle within a test suite. It refers to the granularity at which resources and setup code are created and torn down for tests, affecting isolation, performance, and resource usage. In practice, fixturelevel corresponds to the scope of fixtures, with common levels including function (per-test), class (per test class), module (per module), and session (per entire test run). Some frameworks also include a per-suite option or variations such as per-collection, but function, class, module, and session cover the most widely used cases.

While the exact terminology varies by framework, the underlying concept is widely supported. In frameworks like pytest, for example, the analogous concept is fixture scope, which can be function, class, module, or session. Other testing ecosystems may refer to setup and teardown at different levels or call them fixtures with a specific scope. The term fixturelevel itself may appear in documentation or tooling as a shorthand or configuration key, but it is not universally standardized.

Usage and effects: a function-level fixturelevel creates fresh resources for every test, promoting strict isolation but potentially increasing setup overhead. A module- or session-level fixturelevel reuses resources across multiple tests, reducing setup time but requiring careful teardown and protection against side effects. Choosing the appropriate fixturelevel involves balancing test isolation against performance, and often depends on resource types, test dependencies, and the risk of shared-state contamination.

See also: fixtures, test scope, setup and teardown, pytest scope, resource management.