How do I run a unit test against the production database?

Question

How do I run a unit test against the production database instead of the test database?

I have a bug that's seems to occur on my production server but not on my development computer.

I don't care if the database gets trashed.

Answer 1

Is it feasible to make a copy the database, or part of the database that causes the problem? If you keep a backup server, you might be able to copy the data from there instead (make sure you have another backup, in case you messed the backup database).

Basically, you don't want to mess with live data and you don't want to be left with no backup in case you mess something up (and you will!).

Answer 2

Use manage.py dumpdata > mydata.json to get a copy of the data from your database.

Go to your local machine, copy mydata.json to a subdirectory of your app called fixtures e.g. myapp/fixtures/mydata.json and do:

manage.py syncdb # Set up an empty database
manage.py loaddata mydata.json

Your local database will be populated with data and you can test away.