How do I run a single test with Nose in Pylons

I have a Pylons 1.0 app with a bunch of tests in the test/functional directory. I'm getting weird test results and I want to just run a single test. The nose documentation says I should be able to pass in a test name at the command line but I get ImportErrors no matter what I do

For example:

nosetests -x -s sometestname

Gives:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/tsq/lib/python2.6/site-packages/nose-0.11.4-py2.6.egg/nose/loader.py", line 371, in loadTestsFromName
   module = resolve_name(addr.module)
  File "/home/ben/.virtualenvs/tsq/lib/python2.6/site-packages/nose-0.11.4-py2.6.egg/nose/util.py", line 334, in resolve_name
   module = __import__('.'.join(parts_copy))
ImportError: No module named sometestname

I get the same error for

nosetests -x -s appname.tests.functional.testcontroller

What is the correct syntax?

nosetests appname.tests.functional.test_controller should work, where the file is named test_controller.py.

To run a specific test class and method use a path of the form module.path:ClassNameInFile.method_name, that is, with a colon separating the module/file path and the objects within the file. module.path is the relative path to the file (e.g. tests/my_tests.py:ClassNameInFile.method_name).

For me using Nosetests 1.3.0 these variants are working (but make sure you have __init__.py in your tests folder):

nosetests [options] tests.ui_tests
nosetests [options] tests/ui_tests.py
nosetests [options] tests.ui_tests:TestUI.test_admin_page

Note that single colon between module name and class name.

I have to add the ".py" file extension, that is,

r'/path_to/my_file.py:' +  r'test_func_xy'

Maybe this is because I don't have any classes in the file. Without the .py, nose was complaining:

> Can't find callable test_func_xy in file /path_to/my_file: file is not > a python module

And this although I have an __init__.py in the folder /path_to/.

I wrote this small script, based on the previous answers:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# 
# Usage:
# 
#     ./noseTest <filename> <method_name>
# 
# e.g.:
# 
#     ./noseTest test/MainTest.py mergeAll
#     
# It is assumed that the file and the test class have the _same name_ 
# (e.g. the test class `MainTest` is defined in the file `MainTest.py`).
# If you don't follow this convention, this script won't work for you.
#

testFile="$1"
testMethod="$2"

testClass="$(basename "$testFile" .py)"

nosetests "$testFile:$testClass.test_$testMethod"

The following worked for me just well:

nosetests test_file.py:method_name

Note that my tests where not in a class. Test methods were in a single file.

For nosetests 1.3.7, you need to do:

nosetests --tests=tests.test_something.py,tests.test_something_else.py.