django testing with local settings

Question

Python 2.7 Django 1.2

I am getting odd local_settings behavior when I am testing a Django app. I have my <project>/settings.py set up like this:

DEBUG = False
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = DEBUG

ADMINS = (
        ("Me", "[email protected]"),
)

MANAGERS = ADMINS + (('Person1', '[email protected]'),)

# ... rest of settings

try:
    from local_settings import *
except ImportError:
    pass

and in <project>/local_settings.py I have:

DEBUG = True

MANAGERS = (
        ('Me', '[email protected]'),
)

So, while working locally, the MANAGERS setting should be (('Me', '[email protected]'),), and DEBUG should be set to True.

However, in the tests for one of my apps, I am testing settings.DEBUG and getting False, but the MANAGERS setting is set correctly (it just has 'Me' in it). Any ideas why this would happen? Here are the relevant parts of the <project>/<app>/tests.py file:

from django.conf import settings
from django.test import TestCase

# ...
class MyTests(TestCase):
    def mytest(self):
        if settings.DEBUG:
            self.assertEqual(settings.MANAGERS, (('Me', '[email protected]'),))
        else:
            self.assertEqual(settings.MANAGERS, (('Me', '[email protected]'), ('Person1', '[email protected]')))

The result is

AssertionError: (('Me', '[email protected]'),) != (('Me', '[email protected]'), ('Person1', '[email protected]'))

So it looks like it is testing the else branch due to settings.DEBUG being set incorrectly, and then raising AssertionError since settings.MANAGERS is set correctly.

If I run python manage.py shell I get this:

>>> from django.conf import settings
>>> settings.DEBUG
True
>>> settings.MANAGERS
(('Me', '[email protected]'),)

So they are set correctly there.

I know I can override settings manually in my tests, but I wanted to try to use settings.DEBUG so that the test would pass no matter whether it was being run locally or in production.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is an intentional choice within Django:

Regardless of the value of the DEBUG setting in your configuration file, all Django tests run with DEBUG=False. This is to ensure that the observed output of your code matches what will be seen in a production setting.

Ref: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/testing/#other-test-conditions