pytest_django

pytest_django is a plugin for py.test that provides a set of useful tools for testing Django applications.

Requires:

• Django 1.1
• py.test 1.0.0

Installation

$ python setup.py install

Then simply create a conftest.py file in the root of your Django project containing:

pytest_plugins = ['django']

Usage

Run py.test in the root directory of your Django project:

$ py.test

This will attempt to import the Django settings and run any tests.

Note that the default py.test collector is used, as well as any file within a tests directory. As such, so it will not honour INSTALLED_APPS. You must use collect_ignore in a conftest.py file to exclude any tests you don't want to be run.

See py.test's documentation for more information, including usage of the -k option for selecting specific tests.

A --settings option is provided for explicitly setting a settings module, similar to manage.py.

The --copy_live_db switch will copy your live database to run the tests against, rather than creating a new one from scratch each time. This is useful if you're using a database migration system such as South, and have a large number of migrations defined, which can be very slow to run.

There is also a --database option which works in conjunction with --copy_live_db to specify a particular database to copy, to avoid problems caused by tests interacting with data that's in your database already but which isn't created via migrations or test setup code. With this option, you can have a ready-migrated database which is used just for testing, while you continue to develop on your main database.

pytest_django makes py.test's built in unittest support fully backwards compatible with Django's unittest test cases. If they are failing, this is a bug.

Hooks

The session start/finish and setup/teardown hooks act like Django's test management command and unittest test cases. This includes creating the test database and maintaining a constant test environment, amongst other things.

Funcargs

client

A Django test client instance.

Example:

def test_something(client):
    assert 'Success!' in client.get('/path/')

rf

An instance of Simon Willison's excellent RequestFactory.

settings

A Django settings object that restores itself after the tests have run, making it safe to modify for testing purposes.

Example:

def test_middleware(settings, client):
    settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = ('app.middleware.SomeMiddleware',)
    assert 'Middleware works!' in client.get('/')

Decorators

@py.test.params

A decorator to make parametrised tests easy. Takes a list of dictionaries of keyword arguments for the function. A test is created for each dictionary.

Example:

@py.test.params([dict(a=1, b=2), dict(a=3, b=3), dict(a=5, b=4)])  
def test_equals(a, b):
    assert a == b

@py.test.urls

Provides the ability to change the URLconf for this test, similar to the urls attribute on Django's TestCase.

Example:

@py.test.urls('myapp.test_urls')
def test_something(client):
    assert 'Success!' in client.get('/some_path/')

Fixtures

Fixtures can be loaded with py.test.load_fixture(name). For example:

def pytest_funcarg__articles(request):
    py.test.load_fixture('test_articles')
    return Article.objects.all()