configuring_django.rst

Configuring Django settings

There are a couple of different ways Django settings can be provided for the tests.

The environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE

Running the tests with DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE defined will find the Django settings the same way Django does by default.

Example:

$ export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=test_settings
$ py.test

or:

$ DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=test_settings py.test

Command line option --ds=SETTINGS

Example:

$ py.test --ds=test_settings

pytest.ini settings

Example contents of pytest.ini:

[pytest]
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE = test_settings

Using django-configurations

There is support for using django-configurations.

To do so configure the settings class using an environment variable, the --dc flag, or pytest.ini DJANGO_CONFIGURATION.

Environment Variable:

$ export DJANGO_CONFIGURATION=MySettings
$ py.test

Command Line Option:

$ py.test --dc=MySettings

INI File Contents:

[pytest]
DJANGO_CONFIGURATION=MySettings

Using django.conf.settings.configure()

Django settings can be set up by calling django.conf.settings.configure().

This can be done from your project's conftest.py file:

from django.conf import settings

def pytest_configure():
    settings.configure(DATABASES=...)

DEBUG setting during the test run

Default django test runner behavior is to force DEBUG setting to False. So does the pytest-django. But sometimes, especially for functional tests, you might want to avoid this, to debug why certain page does not work.

Command Line Option:

$ py.test --no-force-no-debug

will make sure that DEBUG is not forced to False, so you can set it to True in your test settings.