CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmysqldjangosqlitedjango-testing
user2570027
user2570027

Reputation: 334

How to use different database engines in Django for testing and production

I'm quite newbie in Django. I have an application in project which is developed with test driven development. In production we use MySQL as database engine, but if I run test with MySQL:

./manage test myapp

Then it absorbs too much time (2-4 mins) to create database, althought tests are quite fast (about a second).

If I use SQLite then tests requires only a few seconds, which is perfect for me. But the problem is that I often need the admin interface with my local database on MySQL.

How to make django to run tests on sqlite and launch runserver with mysql?

Now I use these settings in settings/local.py, but I should comment/uncomment lines to change database depending on what activity I do at the moment.

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',  # Use for testing
        'NAME': 'databasename.db3',
        # 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',  # Use if need admin on localserver
        # 'NAME': 'databasename',              
        'USER': 'myuser',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': 'somepassword',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
        'TEST_CHARSET': "utf8",         #option to make tesing database with utf8
        'TEST_COLLATION': "utf8_general_ci",
    }
}

Upvotes: 8

Views: 4992

Answers (4)

Pawel Beca
Pawel Beca

Reputation: 136

You don't need to do any hacks. "--settings" - this is what you're looking for.

python manage.py test APP --settings settings.local
python manage.py test APP --settings settings.production

Upvotes: 6

Albert Tugushev
Albert Tugushev

Reputation: 1712

Usually i use the following schema:

Create a two settings files for different modes

touch settings/production.py
touch settings/testing.py

On production mode

ln -s settings/production.py settings/__init__.py

On testing mode

ln -s settings/testing.py settings/__init__.py

Upvotes: 0

Marwan Alsabbagh
Marwan Alsabbagh

Reputation: 26848

Whenever possible it's always a good idea to use the same setup in production and test. It makes for better testing. I great way to deal with tests running slowly is to use django-nose. It lets you reuse previously created test databases. This can super speed up test runs. Check out enabling database reuse in the docs. An example is as follows:

REUSE_DB=1 ./manage.py test

Upvotes: 0

alecxe
alecxe

Reputation: 474161

One option would be to check sys.argv for the test argument in settings.py:

if 'test' in sys.argv:
    DATABASES['default']['ENGINE'] = 'django.db.backends.sqlite3'
    DATABASES['default']['NAME'] = 'databasename.db3'

Though, as a side note: strictly speaking, it is not really a good idea to have different database backends for testing and for development/stage/production. You may encounter database-specific "special" cases, that can cost you a lot of time and headache.

Upvotes: 12

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