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Python Django Basics Test Time Model Tests

Posted by Eddy Hood
Eddy Hood
10,154 Points

When creating model tests, is it good to hit our live database?

When we write these model tests, aren't we actually creating instances in our database? Is that the best convention, or should we use a temporary database? If the latter, how would you do that? It just seems weird to run tests that effect our real db.

Victor Santiago
Victor Santiago
11,135 Points

Use SQLite that would create a database file on the root directory of your script file that you can use for testing.

1 Answer

Greg Kaleka
Greg Kaleka
39,021 Points
Greg Kaleka
Greg Kaleka
39,021 Points

Hi Eddy,

Great question. I expect we'll cover mocking at some point, which gets around this issue entirely, but the issue isn't that we're messing with your live database - we're not - it's about performance. Once you have lots of tests in a big application, database operations can slow down testing considerably, especially if testing large operations. For this tiny project, it's not a problem.

About that live database. Take a careful look at the output when you run a test:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.001s

OK
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

See the first and last line? Django is creating and then destroying a test database, rather than using your actual database. So no need to worry about that aspect.

Cheers :beers:

-Greg