Testcontainers Python

testcontainers-python facilitates the use of Docker containers for functional and integration testing.

For more information, see the docs.

Getting Started

>>> from testcontainers.postgres import PostgresContainer
>>> import sqlalchemy

>>> with PostgresContainer("postgres:16") as postgres:
...     engine = sqlalchemy.create_engine(postgres.get_connection_url())
...     with engine.begin() as connection:
...         result = connection.execute(sqlalchemy.text("select version()"))
...         version, = result.fetchone()
>>> version
'PostgreSQL 16...'

The snippet above will spin up a postgres database in a container. The get_connection_url() convenience method returns a sqlalchemy compatible url we use to connect to the database and retrieve the database version.

Contributing / Development / Release

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.

Configuration

You can set environment variables to configure the library behaviour:

Env Variable	Example	Description
TESTCONTAINERS_DOCKER_SOCKET_OVERRIDE	/var/run/docker.sock	Path to Docker's socket used by ryuk
TESTCONTAINERS_RYUK_PRIVILEGED	false	Run ryuk as a privileged container
TESTCONTAINERS_RYUK_DISABLED	false	Disable ryuk
RYUK_CONTAINER_IMAGE	testcontainers/ryuk:0.8.1	Custom image for ryuk
RYUK_RECONNECTION_TIMEOUT	10s	Reconnection timeout for Ryuk TCP socket before Ryuk reaps all dangling containers

Alternatively you can set the configuration during runtime:

from testcontainers.core import testcontainers_config

testcontainers_config.ryuk_docker_socket = "/home/user/docker.sock"