Django tests for sending email

Question

I need to test that mail is sent from a Django 1.8 application; the documentation is clear on how to do this, e.g.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/topics/testing/tools/#email-services

Here's some code which should therefore suffice:

from myapp.utils.mailutils import mail as mymail
from django.core import mail

def testThisFails(self):
    user = User.objects.filter(id=1).__getitem__(0)
    mymail(user,'Test Message','Test message content, please ignore...')
    self.assertEquals(len(mail.outbox), 1)
    self.assertEquals(mail.outbox[0].subject, 'Test Message')

...obviously, I have proper tests as well. Anyway, I get nothing but this:

self.assertEquals(len(mail.outbox), 1)
AssertionError: 0 != 1

Here's a similar question mentioning that the locmail backend needs to be used:

Django 1.3: Outbox empty during tests

So, I added this to settings.py:

TESTING = len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == 'test'
if TESTING:
    EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.locmem.EmailBackend'

...with no luck. Even omitting the if TESTING doesn't address the issue. Is there any means by which I can get my tests to use this backend directly?

Answer 1

Use self.settings context manager for overriding settings

def testThisFails(self):
    # do first here
    user = User.objects.filter(id=1).__getitem__(0)
    with self.settings(EMAIL_BACKEND='django.core.mail.backends.locmem.EmailBackend'):
        mymail(user,'Test Message','Test message content, please ignore...')
        self.assertEquals(len(mail.outbox), 1)
        self.assertEquals(mail.outbox[0].subject, 'Test Message')

Also use first or get instead of __getitem__. Which is magic method for doing [0] call

user = User.objects.filter(id=1).first()