<p>I have some kind of test data and want to create a unit test for each item. My first idea was to do it like this:</p>
<pre><code>import unittest

l = [[&quot;foo&quot;, &quot;a&quot;, &quot;a&quot;,], [&quot;bar&quot;, &quot;a&quot;, &quot;b&quot;], [&quot;lee&quot;, &quot;b&quot;, &quot;b&quot;]]

class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):
    def testsample(self):
        for name, a,b in l:
            print &quot;test&quot;, name
            self.assertEqual(a,b)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()
</code></pre>
<p>The downside of this is that it handles all data in one test. I would like to generate one test for each item on the fly. Any suggestions?</p>

This is called "parametrization".
There are several tools that support this approach. E.g.:
pytest's decorator
parameterized
The resulting code looks like this:
```
```
from parameterized import parameterized

class TestSequence(unittest.TestCase):
    @parameterized.expand([
        ["foo", "a", "a",],
        ["bar", "a", "b"],
        ["lee", "b", "b"],
    ])
    def test_sequence(self, name, a, b):
        self.assertEqual(a,b)
```
```
Which will generate the tests:
```
```
test_sequence_0_foo (__main__.TestSequence) ... ok
test_sequence_1_bar (__main__.TestSequence) ... FAIL
test_sequence_2_lee (__main__.TestSequence) ... ok

======================================================================
FAIL: test_sequence_1_bar (__main__.TestSequence)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/parameterized/parameterized.py", line 233, in <lambda>
    standalone_func = lambda *a: func(*(a + p.args), **p.kwargs)
  File "x.py", line 12, in test_sequence
    self.assertEqual(a,b)
AssertionError: 'a' != 'b'
```
```
For historical reasons I'll leave the original answer circa 2008):
I use something like this:
```
```
import unittest

l = [["foo", "a", "a",], ["bar", "a", "b"], ["lee", "b", "b"]]

class TestSequense(unittest.TestCase):
    pass

def test_generator(a, b):
    def test(self):
        self.assertEqual(a,b)
    return test

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for t in l:
        test_name = 'test_%s' % t[0]
        test = test_generator(t[1], t[2])
        setattr(TestSequense, test_name, test)
    unittest.main()
```
```