django-discover-runner 0.1.1

A Django test runner based on unittest2's test discovery.

An alternative Django TEST_RUNNER which uses the unittest2 test discovery from a base path specified in the settings, or any other module or package specified to the test management command – including app tests.

If you just run ./manage.py test, it’ll discover and run all tests underneath the TEST_DISCOVER_ROOT setting (a file system path). If you run ./manage.py test full.dotted.path.to.test_module, it’ll run the tests in that module (you can also pass multiple modules). If you give it a single dotted path to a package (like a Django app) like ./manage.py test myapp and that package does not itself directly contain any tests, it’ll do test discovery in all submodules of that package.

Note

This code uses the default unittest2 test discovery behavior, which only searches for tests in files named test*.py. To override this see the TEST_DISCOVER_PATTERN setting below.

Why?

Django’s own test discovery is very much tied to the directory structure of Django apps, partly due to historic reasons (the unittest library didn’t have its own discovery for a long time) and prevents Django app authors from being good Python citizens. django-discover-runner uses the official test discovery feature of the new unittest2 library which is included in Django.

By default there is no way to put project specific tests in a separate folder outside the Python package of the Django project, which is a great way to organize your code, separating the tests and non-test code. django-discover-runner helps you clean up your project tests.

There is also no way to specify fully dotted import paths to test modules, functions, class or methods to the test management command but only Django’s odd standard <appname>.<TestClassName>. django-discover-runner allows you to specify any type of label to Django’s test management command.

By default Django’s test runner will execute the tests of Django’s own contrib apps, which doesn’t make sense if you just want to run your own app’s or project’s tests. django-discover-runner fixes this by allowing you to specify which tests to run and organize your test code outside the reach of the Django test runner.

More reasons can be found in Carl Meyer’s excellent talk about Testing and Django (slides).

Settings

• TEST_RUNNER (required) needs to point to the DiscoverRunner class to enable it:

  TEST_RUNNER = 'discover_runner.DiscoverRunner'

• TEST_DISCOVER_ROOT (optional) should be the root directory to discover tests within. You could make this the same as TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL if you want tests to be discovered anywhere in your project or app.

• TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL (optional) should be the directory containing your top-level package(s); in other words, the directory that should be on sys.path for your code to import. This is the directory containing manage.py in the new Django 1.4 project layout.

• TEST_DISCOVER_PATTERN (optional) is the pattern to use when discovering tests and defaults to the unittest2 standard test*.py.

Examples

Django app

To test a reusable Django app it’s recommended to add a test_settings.py file to your app package to easily run the app tests with the test management command. Simply set the TEST_RUNNER setting to 'discover_runner.DiscoverRunner', configure the other settings neccesary to run your tests and call the test management command with the name of the app package, e.g.:

django-admin.py test --settings=myapp.test_settings myapp

Django project (Django >= 1.4)

If you want to test a project and want to store the project’s tests outside the project main package (recommended), you can simply follow the app instructions above, applying it to the “project” package, but set a few additional settings to tell the test runner to find the tests:

from os import path
TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL = path.dirname(path.dirname(__file__))
TEST_DISCOVER_ROOT = path.join(TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL, 'tests')

This would find all the tests within a top-level “tests” package. Running the tests is as easy as calling:

django-admin.py test --settings=mysite.test_settings

Django project (Django < 1.4)

For the old project style you can simply leave out one call to the os.path.dirname function, since the old project directories were only one level deep:

from os import path
TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL = path.dirname(__file__)
TEST_DISCOVER_ROOT = path.join(TEST_DISCOVER_TOP_LEVEL, 'tests')

Other than that it’s similar to the new project’s style configuration.

Thanks

This test runner is a humble rip-off of Carl Meyer’s DiscoveryRunner which he published as a gist a while ago. All praise should be directed at him. Thanks, Carl!

This is also very much related to ticket #17365 and is hopefully useful in replacing the default test runner in Django.