nose2django

A plugin pair for nose2 that runs your django (>=1.4) tests through the nose2 command and also supports django-configurations settings management. It lets django initialise the test environment and setup the order of the test suite, but nose2/unittest2 handles the test discovery and execution.

There is another project called django-nose which is authored by one of the nose2 devs. It uses the standard django approach of setting an alternative test runner and running via manage.py. I was interested with the move to shift setup.py configuration into setup.cfg and wanted to try that pattern for running tests rather that wrapping configuration into a custom test runner. Modern django has refactored the way a project is initialised which means there is less dependency on using manage.py and django-admin.py as the only possible entry points into your django project.

Installation

$ pip install nose2django

Create a nose2.cfg file in your project's root directory (where manage.py is) and register the plugins in the correct order:

[unittest]
plugins = nose2django.config
        nose2django.nose2django

[django-config]
always-on = True

# optional settings
settings = yourproject.settings
configuration = YourTestConfiguration

[django-runner]
always-on = True

You can optionally set the settings and configuration to a django settings module and a django-configurations configuration. It takes precedence over any existing environment.

Usage

As per nose2, optionally with either of the django-runner options.

$ nose2 --settings=example.settings.test --configuration=TestSettings

Patterns

For django app test driven development of apps you want only as much django settings as required. Create a tests folder in your top level directory (avoid using the name tests - use something like test_yourapp to avoid name clashes), and put a minimal settings file in there and an __init__.py file to make it importable. Something like:

    DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3' }
}

    INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'yourapp',
)
    ROOT_URLCONF='yourapp.urls', # if you have urls
    SECRET_KEY = '1234'

Acknowledgements

nose2django re-uses parts of the existing django test runner code as licensed by django.