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<h1><a href="../../index.html">Django 1.5.8 documentation</a></h1>
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<div class="section" id="s-testing-in-django">
<span id="testing-in-django"></span><h1>Testing in Django<a class="headerlink" href="#testing-in-django" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
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<p>Automated testing is an extremely useful bug-killing tool for the modern
Web developer. You can use a collection of tests – a <strong>test suite</strong> – to
solve, or avoid, a number of problems:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>When you’re writing new code, you can use tests to validate your code
works as expected.</li>
<li>When you’re refactoring or modifying old code, you can use tests to
ensure your changes haven’t affected your application’s behavior
unexpectedly.</li>
</ul>
<p>Testing a Web application is a complex task, because a Web application is made
of several layers of logic – from HTTP-level request handling, to form
validation and processing, to template rendering. With Django’s test-execution
framework and assorted utilities, you can simulate requests, insert test data,
inspect your application’s output and generally verify your code is doing what
it should be doing.</p>
<p>The best part is, it’s really easy.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-unit-tests-v-doctests">
<span id="unit-tests-v-doctests"></span><h2>Unit tests v. doctests<a class="headerlink" href="#unit-tests-v-doctests" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>There are two primary ways to write tests with Django, corresponding to the
two test frameworks that ship in the Python standard library. The two
frameworks are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first"><strong>Unit tests</strong> – tests that are expressed as methods on a Python class
that subclasses <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/unittest.html#unittest.TestCase" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">unittest.TestCase</span></tt></a> or Django’s customized
<a class="reference internal" href="overview.html#django.test.TestCase" title="django.test.TestCase"><tt class="xref py py-class docutils literal"><span class="pre">TestCase</span></tt></a>. For example:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">unittest</span>
<span class="k">class</span> <span class="nc">MyFuncTestCase</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">unittest</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">TestCase</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">testBasic</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="n">a</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">'larry'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'curly'</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">'moe'</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">assertEqual</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">my_func</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">0</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="s">'larry'</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="bp">self</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">assertEqual</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">my_func</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">1</span><span class="p">),</span> <span class="s">'curly'</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</li>
<li><p class="first"><strong>Doctests</strong> – tests that are embedded in your functions’ docstrings and
are written in a way that emulates a session of the Python interactive
interpreter. For example:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="k">def</span> <span class="nf">my_func</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">a_list</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">idx</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="sd">"""</span>
<span class="sd"> >>> a = ['larry', 'curly', 'moe']</span>
<span class="sd"> >>> my_func(a, 0)</span>
<span class="sd"> 'larry'</span>
<span class="sd"> >>> my_func(a, 1)</span>
<span class="sd"> 'curly'</span>
<span class="sd"> """</span>
<span class="k">return</span> <span class="n">a_list</span><span class="p">[</span><span class="n">idx</span><span class="p">]</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="section" id="s-which-should-i-use">
<span id="which-should-i-use"></span><h3>Which should I use?<a class="headerlink" href="#which-should-i-use" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Because Django supports both of the standard Python test frameworks, it’s up to
you and your tastes to decide which one to use. You can even decide to use
<em>both</em>.</p>
<p>For developers new to testing, however, this choice can seem confusing. Here,
then, are a few key differences to help you decide which approach is right for
you:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>If you’ve been using Python for a while, <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/doctest.html#doctest" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">doctest</span></tt></a> will probably feel
more “pythonic”. It’s designed to make writing tests as easy as possible,
so it requires no overhead of writing classes or methods. You simply put
tests in docstrings. This has the added advantage of serving as
documentation (and correct documentation, at that!). However, while
doctests are good for some simple example code, they are not very good if
you want to produce either high quality, comprehensive tests or high
quality documentation. Test failures are often difficult to debug
as it can be unclear exactly why the test failed. Thus, doctests should
generally be avoided and used primarily for documentation examples only.</li>
<li>The <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/unittest.html#unittest" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">unittest</span></tt></a> framework will probably feel very familiar to
developers coming from Java. <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/unittest.html#unittest" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">unittest</span></tt></a> is inspired by Java’s JUnit,
so you’ll feel at home with this method if you’ve used JUnit or any test
framework inspired by JUnit.</li>
<li>If you need to write a bunch of tests that share similar code, then
you’ll appreciate the <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/unittest.html#unittest" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">unittest</span></tt></a> framework’s organization around
classes and methods. This makes it easy to abstract common tasks into
common methods. The framework also supports explicit setup and/or cleanup
routines, which give you a high level of control over the environment
in which your test cases are run.</li>
<li>If you’re writing tests for Django itself, you should use <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/unittest.html#unittest" title="(in Python v2.7)"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">unittest</span></tt></a>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-where-to-go-from-here">
<span id="where-to-go-from-here"></span><h2>Where to go from here<a class="headerlink" href="#where-to-go-from-here" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>As unit tests are preferred in Django, we treat them in detail in the
<a class="reference internal" href="overview.html"><em>Testing Django applications</em></a> document.</p>
<p><a class="reference internal" href="doctests.html"><em>Django and doctests</em></a> describes Django-specific features when using doctests.</p>
<p>You can also use any <em>other</em> Python test framework, Django provides an API and
tools for that kind of integration. They are described in the
<a class="reference internal" href="advanced.html#other-testing-frameworks"><em>Using different testing frameworks</em></a> section of <a class="reference internal" href="advanced.html"><em>Advanced testing topics</em></a>.</p>
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<h3><a href="../../contents.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Testing in Django</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#unit-tests-v-doctests">Unit tests v. doctests</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#which-should-i-use">Which should I use?</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#where-to-go-from-here">Where to go from here</a></li>
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