How to test single application (not project) in Django? - django

Question

I would like to test my small application, that I keep in a separate package. Right now I created a "test_project" directory, created a test project there and I am using the project's manage.py to run tests. But I keep wondering - is there a better method? Is it possible to launch a single app's tests, perhaps with some default configuration (like, sqlite database)?

Answer 1

It is possible to run a single app's tests standalone, without creating a Django test project for that purpose. One way of doing so is by creating a runtests.py in your app's root dir which setups Django settings and runs ./manage.py test your_app programmatically. One example of runtests.py is Django's own: runtests.py (documentation).
Django's own runtests.py is a good reference but I find it convoluted for most cases. Below are a couple of alternative examples:
Django-Modeltranslation
My own minimalistic one

Answer 2

Writing this down because I don't see it on here yet
From the docs
If your django structure looks something like this as it should:
Project dir/
/myapp
/myotherapp
/myproject
Django allows you to execute test from only "myotherapp" by executing:
./manage.py test myotherapp/
This will execute all test under "myotherapp" whereas
./manage.py test
will execute all test in your projects directory.

Answer 3

If you use nose you can run a single app's tests.
python manage.py test app.tests:TestClassHere
as for testing a single app. I just follow the convention other big django projects do, and that is exactly what you are doing. Create a test_project directory.
https://github.com/mozilla/django-piston/tree/master/tests/test_project
I figure if it is good enough for some of the biggest django pluggable apps it's good enough for me.

Answer 4

Ofcourse you can test the Python parts with a standalone unittest if you don't need any django dependencies
A Django environment requires atleast a settings.py and manage.py file. You can setup those with essential stuff only and UnitTest your app with manage.py. You should see a project as a Django runtime environment, there's no Django without it. You can probably mimic settings but tbh you would just be creating more hacks than simplicity.

Answer 5

You can also create a custom test runner and override the path it searches for tests in.
Perhaps I buried the lede here. I recently inherited a project that had legacy tests they wanted to keep for historical reasons, so I was forced to write all my tests in one folder and point to it
from django.test.runner import DiscoverRunner
class MyTestRunner(DiscoverRunner):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs.update({'top_level': str(settings.TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL)})
super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)
def run_tests(self, test_labels, extra_tests=None, **kwargs):
# In order to override the top_level directory, the test_label must match the top_level
kwargs.update({'test_labels': [str(settings.TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL)]})
return super().run_tests(extra_tests=extra_tests, **kwargs)
and in your settings
TEST_RUNNER = 'path.to.my.module.MyTestRunner'
TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL = BASE_DIR / 'tests/unit_and_integration_tests'