How to spread django unit tests over multiple files?

• I have a python-django application
• I'm using the unit testing framework
• The tests are arranged in the file "tests.py" in the module directory
• I'm running the tests via ./manage.py test app

Now..

• The tests.py file is getting rather large/complex/messy
• I'd like to break tests.py up into smaller collections of tests...

How?

Note that this approach is no longer valid from Django 1.6, see this post.

You can create tests folder with ___init___.py inside (so that it becomes a package). Then you add your split test .py files there and import all of them in ___init___.py.

I.e: Substitute the test.py file with a module that looks and acts like the file:

Create a tests Directory under the app in question

app
app\models.py
app\views.py
app\tests
app\tests_init_.py
app\tests\bananas.py
app\tests\apples.py

Import the submodules into app\tests\__init__.py:

from bananas import *
from apples import *

Now you can use ./manage.py as if they were all in a single file:

./manage.py test app.some_test_in_bananas

The behavior has changed in Django 1.6, so there is no longer a need to create a package. Just name your files test*.py.

From Django 1.7 documentation > When you run your tests, the default behavior of the test utility is > to find all the test cases (that is, subclasses of unittest.TestCase) > in any file whose name begins with test, automatically build a test > suite out of those test cases, and run that suite.

From Django 1.6 documentation, > Test discovery is based on the unittest module’s built-in test > discovery. By default, this will discover tests in any file named > “test*.py” under the current working directory.

Previous behavior, from Django 1.5 documentation: > When you run your tests, the default behavior of the test utility is > to find all the test cases (that is, subclasses of unittest.TestCase) > in models.py and tests.py, automatically build a test suite out of > those test cases, and run that suite. > > There is a second way to define the test suite for a module: if you > define a function called suite() in either models.py or tests.py, the > Django test runner will use that function to construct the test suite > for that module. This follows the suggested organization for unit > tests. See the Python documentation for more details on how to > construct a complex test suite.

The answer as stated by Tomasz is correct. However, it can become tedious to ensure that the imports in __init__.py match your file structure.

To automatically detect all tests in the folder you can add this in __init__.py:

import unittest

def suite():   
    return unittest.TestLoader().discover("appname.tests", pattern="*.py")

This will allow you to run ./manage.py test appname but won't handle running specific tests. To do that you can use this code (also in __init__.py):

import pkgutil
import unittest

for loader, module_name, is_pkg in pkgutil.walk_packages(__path__):
    module = loader.find_module(module_name).load_module(module_name)
    for name in dir(module):
        obj = getattr(module, name)
        if isinstance(obj, type) and issubclass(obj, unittest.case.TestCase):
            exec ('%s = obj' % obj.__name__)

Now you can run all your tests via manage.py test app or specific ones via manage.py test app.TestApples

Just make your directory structure like this:

myapp/
    __init__.py
    tests/
        __init__.py
        test_one.py
        test_two.py
        ...
    ...

And python manage.py test myapp will work as expected.

http://docs.python.org/library/unittest.html#organizing-tests talks about splitting the files into modules, and the section right above it has an example.

With Django 2.2 a simple and fairly good solution could be to create a test folder inside an app, and you can put your related test_...py files into, just add __init__.py to the test folder.

No need to code anything in init. Just create a subdirectory in your app. Only requirement is not to call it tests* For exemple

app/
app/__init_.py
app/serializers.py
app/testing/
app/testing/__init__.py
app/testing/tests_serializers.py

If you have a more complicated setup, or don't want to use from ... import *-type statements, you can define a function called suite in your tests.py (or tests/_init_.py), which returns an instance of unittest.TestSuite.

I have two files. One is tests.py and another is test_api.py. I can run these individually as below.

manage.py test companies.tests
manage.py test companies.test_api

Refer @osa's response about file naming convention.

I think ./manage.py test simply does running all the tests trick (in django >= 1.7).

If your organizing tests is about grouping and cherrypicking and you are fan of nose use django nose:

python manage.py test another.test:TestCase.test_method

If you know nose, then you know how to "wildcard" much nicer over all your files.

PS

It is just a better practice. Hope that helps. The answer was borrowed from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5875111/running-a-specific-test-case-in-django-when-your-app-has-a-tests-directory

In django you can use below comman or can check documentation. Also using this command will pick up files with pattern you provide not just test*.py or test_*.py.

> Documentation
You can specify a custom filename pattern match using the -p (or --pattern) option, if your test files are named differently from the test*.py pattern:

$ ./manage.py test --pattern="tests_*.py"

Just create different test files with tests_name in your app

Say you have following test files:

tests_admins.py
tests_staff.py
tests_others.py
# will run both test files
(venv)..yourapp$./manage.py test --keepdb -v 2 appname

Or in Windows, if you do not want to create a package (i.e folder with __init__.py) and just want to create a folder called "Tests" and this folder contains the test files then to run tests in cmd just enter

python manage.py test your_app_name/Tests

Since a path is expected