How to load fixtures only once in django unit tests ?

Question

In unit tests I need to load fixtures, as below:

   class TestQuestionBankViews(TestCase):          # Load fixtures         fixtures = ['qbank']          def setUp(self):                                        login = self.client.login(email="[email protected]",password="welcome")                   def test_starting_an_exam_view(self):                            candidate = Candidate.objects.get(email="[email protected]")             .......etc           def test_review_view(self):             self.assertTrue(True)                         .........         def test_review_view2(self):             self.assertTrue(True)             ......... 

Problem:

These fixtures are loading for every test, i.e. before test_review_view, test_review_view2, etc., as Django flushes the database after every test.

This behaviour is causing tests to take a long time to complete.

How can I prevent this redundant fixture loading?

Is there a way to load fixtures in setUp and flush them when the test class is finished, instead of flushing between every test?

Answer 1

Using django-nose and a bit of code, you can do exactly what you asked for. With django-nose, you can have per-package, per-module and per-class setup and teardown functions. That allows you to load your fixtures in one of the higher-up setup functions and disable the django.test.TestCase's resetting of the fixtures between tests.

Here is an example test file:

from django.test import TestCase from django.core import management      def setup():         management.call_command('loaddata', 'MyFixture.json', verbosity=0)      def teardown():         management.call_command('flush', verbosity=0, interactive=False)      class MyTestCase(TestCase):          def _fixture_setup(self):             pass          def test_something(self):             self.assertEqual(1, 1) 

Notice that setup and teardown are outside of the class. The setup will be run before all the test classes in this file, and the teardown will be run after all test classes.

Inside the class, you will notice the def _fixture_setup(self) method. This overrides the function that resets the database in between each test.

Keep in mind that if your tests write anything to the database, this could invalidate your tests. So any other tests that need fixtures reloaded for each test should be put in a different test file.