Different db for testing in Django?

Question

DATABASES = { #    'default': { #        'ENGINE': 'postgresql_psycopg2', #        ... #    }      # for unit tests     'default': {         'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',         'NAME': 'mydatabase'     } } 

I have two databases: one I'd like to use for unit tests, and one for everything else. Is it possible to configure this in Django 1.2.4?

(The reason I ask is because with postgresql I'm getting the following error:

foo@bar:~/path/$ python manage.py test Creating test database 'default'... Got an error creating the test database: permission denied to create database  Type 'yes' if you would like to try deleting the test database 'test_baz', or 'no' to cancel: yes Destroying old test database... Got an error recreating the test database: database "test_baz" does not exist 

Why could I be getting this error? I guess I don't really care if I can always use SQLite for unit tests, as that works fine.)

Answer 1

In your settings.py (or local_settings.py):

import sys if 'test' in sys.argv:     DATABASES['default'] = {         'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',         'NAME': 'mydatabase'     } 

Answer 2

The way I handle this is through having multiple settings files, since I use that to maintain a set of common settings with modifications for each instance. It's a little more complicated to set up than some of the other solutions, but I needed to do it anyway because I was managing slightly different settings for local development, remote development, staging and production.

https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SplitSettings has a number of options for managing settings, and I've chosen a practice similar to the one described at https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/SplitSettings#SimplePackageOrganizationforEnvironments

So, in my Django project directory, I have a settings folder that looks like this:

$ tree settings settings ├── defaults.py ├── dev.py ├── dev.pyc ├── __init__.py ├── lettuce.py ├── travis.py ├── unittest.py 

The common settings are in settings/defaults.py and I import these in my instance settings files. So settings/unittest.py looks like this:

from defaults import *  DATABASES = {     'default': {         'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',         'NAME': 'my_database',     } }  

Then, when I want to run tests, I just execute:

$ ./manage.py test --settings=settings.unittest 

to use sqlite for testing. I'll use a different settings module if I want to use a different test runner or database configuration.