How can I pass in a parameter to my TestCase in Django? - django

Question

Using an edited version of the example from Django's own doc, lets say my code looks like this:
from django.test import TestCase
from myapp.models import Animal
class AnimalTestCase(TestCase):
def __init__(self, animal_family):
self.animal_family = animal_family
def setUp(self):
Animal.objects.create(name="lion", sound="roar", family=self.animal_family)
def test_animals_can_speak(self):
"""Animals that can speak are correctly identified"""
lion = Animal.objects.get(name="lion")
self.assertEqual(lion.speak(), 'The mammal lion says "roar"')
Basically, I want to pass in the animal_family parameter into my test, or something similar at least from my terminal. Something like this
python manage.py test myapp.tests.AnimalTestCase 'mammal'
Obviously, the above command does not work. I want to send the 'mammal' as the animal_family to the __init__ method in my test class.
Help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Whilst self-contained tests should be the best practice, if you really wanted to do this you could set an environment variable when you execute the test command.
For example:
import os
from django.test import TestCase
from myapp.models import Animal
class AnimalTestCase(TestCase):
def setUp(self):
# Retrieve the animal family from the environment variable
animal_family = os.environ['animal_family']
Animal.objects.create(name="lion", sound="roar", family=animal_family)
def test_animals_can_speak(self):
"""Animals that can speak are correctly identified"""
lion = Animal.objects.get(name="lion")
self.assertEqual(lion.speak(), 'The mammal lion says "roar"')
And then call the test command such as:
export animal_family=mammal;python manage.py test myapp.tests.AnimalTestCase