How to persist data to DB between tests with pytest-django? - django

Question

How can I persist data to DB when using pytest/pytest-django in a test-run of a Django application?
I run pytest with py.test --nomigrations --reuse-db -s and the Postgres DB test_<configued_db_name> is created as expected, however nothing seems to be persisted to DB between tests and at the end of the test run the DB is empty.
import pytest
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
#pytest.mark.django_db(transaction=False)
def test_insert_user():
user = User.objects.create_user(username="test_user", email="test_user#test.com", password="test")
users = User.objects.all()
assert len(users) > 0
#pytest.mark.django_db(transaction=False)
def test_check_user():
users = User.objects.all()
assert len(users) > 0
The first test passes, the second does not making me wonder if anything is persisted to DB at all. According to the pystest-django documentation #pytest.mark.django_db(transaction=False) will not rollback whatever has been affected by the decorated test.
Thank you,
/David

Answer 1

Another way of prefilling the database with data for each function is like that:
import pytest
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
#pytest.fixture(scope='module')
def django_db_setup(django_db_setup, django_db_blocker):
print('setup')
with django_db_blocker.unblock():
User.objects.create(username='a')
assert set(u.username for u in User.objects.all()) == {'a'}
#pytest.mark.django_db
def test1():
print('test1')
User.objects.create(username='b')
assert set(u.username for u in User.objects.all()) == {'a', 'b'}
#pytest.mark.django_db
def test2():
print('test2')
User.objects.create(username='c')
assert set(u.username for u in User.objects.all()) == {'a', 'c'}
The good thing about this method is that the setup function is only called once:
plugins: django-3.1.2
collected 2 items
mytest.py setup
test1
.test2
.
=================== 2 passed in 1.38 seconds ====================
The bad thing is that 1.38 seconds is a bit too much for such a simple test. --reuse-db is a faster way to do it.

Answer 2

I have solved this problem -- prefill the DB for every function -- by defining a fixture with scope function (i.e. model and session will not work).
Here is the code for testing the views in Django.
# This is used to fill the database more easily
from mixer.backend.django import mixer
import pytest
from django.test import RequestFactory
from inventory import views
from inventory import services
pytestmark = pytest.mark.django_db
#pytest.fixture(scope="function")
def fill_db():
""" Just filling the DB with my data """
for elem in services.Search().get_lookup_data():
mixer.blend('inventory.Enumeration', **elem)
def test_grid_anonymous(fill_db):
request = RequestFactory().get('/grid/')
response = views.items_grid(request)
assert response.status_code == 200, \
"Should be callable by anyone"
def test_list_anonymous(fill_db):
request = RequestFactory().get('/')
response = views.items_list(request)
assert response.status_code == 200, \
"Should be callable by anyone"