Django manage.py : Is it possible to pass command line argument (for unit testing)

Question

Is it possible to pass command line arguments to Django's manage.py script, specifically for unit tests? i.e. if I do something like

manage.py test myapp -a do_this

Can I receive the value do_this in the setUp function of unit test?

P.S. @Martin asked the justification for using command line args in tests:

• Some extensive tests take a lot of time and don't need to be run before every commit. I want to make them optional.

• Occasional debug messages printed by my test cases should be optional

• Sometimes I just want the tests to go crazy and try a lot more permutations of data.

All the above would be quite convenient with command line options. Once in a while testing can be a lot more extensive or verbose, otherwise it'll be quick.

Answer 1

I just ran into this problem myself, and I wanted to avoid setting environmental variables on the command line. Environmental variables certainly work, but it's difficult to keep track of which variables have an effect and there's no error message to let you know if you've mistyped one of them.

To get around this I've used argparse to extract extra parameters to the command-line argument. For example, my manage.py file now looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys
import argparse


if __name__ == "__main__":
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "project.settings")

    argv = sys.argv
    cmd = argv[1] if len(argv) > 1 else None
    if cmd in ['test']:  # limit the extra arguments to certain commands
        parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(add_help=False)
        parser.add_argument('--foo', default='bar')
        args, argv = parser.parse_known_args(argv)
        # We can save the argument as an environmental variable, in
        # which case it's to retrieve from within `project.settings`,
        os.environ['FOO'] = args.foo
        # or we can save the variable to settings directly if it
        # won't otherwise be overridden.
        from django.conf import settings
        settings.foo = args.foo

    from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line

    # parse_known_args strips the extra arguments from argv,
    # so we can safely pass it to Django.
    execute_from_command_line(argv)

argparse is a really nice library with lots of features. There's a good tutorial on it in the Python docs.

Answer 2

i'm using environment variables workaround in my project (works in unix-like shells only)

berry$ myvar=myval ./manage.py test 

in your module read this value using

os.environ.get('myvar')

Answer 3

Django allows adding custom commandline options from the testrunner class. You can create a subclass of the default testrunner class and add your own options, and then let django use your custom testrunner as follows.

For example, create a testrunner.py in your Django project directory, containing:

from django.test.runner import DiscoverRunner

class TestRunner(DiscoverRunner):
    def __init__(self, option=None, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(**kwargs)

        print("Passed option: {}".format(option))

    @classmethod
    def add_arguments(cls, parser):
        DiscoverRunner.add_arguments(parser)

        parser.add_argument('-o', '--option', help='Example option')

This is a testrunner that derives from the default runner (so it works just like the default), except that it tells django to add an extra commandline option (in the add_arguments() class method) and processes the value of this extra option in the constructor. To run with this new runner, pass its name as follows:

./manage.py test --testrunner=testrunner.TestRunner -o foo

Of course you can put this class anywhere else, as long as you pass the full import name to it on the commandline.

Note that you must use --testrunner=foo, you cannot use two separate arguments (--testrunner foo), since then the extra arguments do not work. A fix is pending: https://github.com/django/django/pull/10307

This example just prints the option value, but you'll want to pass it to your testcase somehow. I couldn't find any quick info on how to pass options to unittest testcases, but you could probably just use a global (module level) variable or class variable for this (which is not so re-entrant and elegant, but is easy and works).

Answer 4

As an alternative way to manage.py test -a do_this you can use specific settings file

manage.py --settings=project.test_settings test

and define in this file whatever you want.

# test_setting.py
SPECIFIC_OPTION = "test"

# tests.py
from django.conf import settings
...
def setUp(self):
    if settings.SPECIFIC_OPTION:
        ....

If you need really dynamic options, maybe you can use sys.argv in test_settings.py, but it is a really dirty hack.