How to change the filename of pytest-html's generated HTML report?

Question

I know how to change the report name, the following does that for me just fine:

conftest.py

def pytest_html_report_title(report):
   report.title = 'My API Testing'

But that doesn't change the name of the actual file itself. It is still showing up as report.html and just overwriting itself every run.

Is there a way to change the filename? I want to name it something dynamic with a timestamp so it doesn't keep overwriting the same file.

Answer 1

The pytest-html plugin adds an --html CLI option to pytest to customize the path and filename of the generated HTML file:

$ ls | grep -c "html"
0
 
$ pytest --html=mycustomreportfilename.html tests/*
...
- Generated html report: file:/path/to/mycustomreportfilename.html -

$ ls | grep -c "html"
1

$ ls | grep "html"
mycustomreportfilename.html

If you want "something dynamic with a timestamp" and you are using a shell or an environment that has date/time commands or utilities (such as the date command on Bash), you can then pass the output of those commands or utilities to the --html option (see this related post on generating various formats using date):

$ ls | grep -c "html"
0

$ pytest --html="$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ)_report.html" tests/*
$ pytest --html="$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ)_report.html" tests/*
$ pytest --html="$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ)_report.html" tests/*

$ ls | grep -c "html"
3

$ ls | grep "html"
20240106_171151Z_report.html
20240106_171202Z_report.html
20240106_171206Z_report.html

But in doing that, it generates the same assets folder for all the generated HTML reports. Not sure if that will be a problem, but to guarantee that each report is independent, I suggest also passing the --self-contained-html option to create a self-contained HTML report:

$ pytest --html="$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ)_report.html" --self-contained-html tests/*

The --html option isn't documented in the pytest-html docs (as of pytest-html 4.1.1), but it is there in the source code (again as of pytest-html 4.1.1 https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest-html/blob/4.1.1/src/pytest_html/plugin.py#L27-L33):

group.addoption(
    "--html",
    action="store",
    dest="htmlpath",
    metavar="path",
    default=None,
    help="create html report file at given path.",
)