Loading fixtures in django unit tests

I'm trying to start writing unit tests for django and I'm having some questions about fixtures:

I made a fixture of my whole project db (not certain application) and I want to load it for each test, because it looks like loading only the fixture for certain app won't be enough.

I'd like to have the fixture stored in /proj_folder/fixtures/proj_fixture.json.

I've set the FIXTURE_DIRS = ('/fixtures/',) in my settings.py. Then in my testcase I'm trying

fixtures = ['proj_fixture.json']

but my fixtures don't lo开发者_如何学JAVAad. How can this be solved? How to add the place for searching fixtures? In general, is it ok to load the fixture for the whole test_db for each test in each app (if it's quite small)? Thanks!

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I've specified path relative to project root in the TestCase like so:

from django.test import TestCase

class MyTestCase(TestCase):
    fixtures = ['/myapp/fixtures/dump.json',]
    ...

and it worked without using FIXTURE_DIRS

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Good practice is using PROJECT_ROOT variable in your settings.py:

import os.path
PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
FIXTURE_DIRS = (os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'fixtures'),)

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Do you really have a folder /fixtures/ on your hard disk?

You probably intended to use:

FIXTURE_DIRS = ('/path/to/proj_folder/fixtures/',)

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Instead of creating fixures folder and placing fixtures in them (in every app), a better and neater way to handle this would be to put all fixtures in one folder at the project level and load them.

from django.core.management import call_command

class TestMachin(TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        # Load fixtures
        call_command('loaddata', 'fixtures/myfixture', verbosity=0)

Invoking call_command is equivalent to running :

 manage.py loaddata /path/to/fixtures 

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Saying you have a project named hello_django with api app.

Following are steps to create fixtures for it:

1. Optional step: create fixture file from database: python manage.py dumpdata --format=json > api/fixtures/testdata.json
2. Create test directory: api/tests
3. Create empty file __init__.py in api/tests
4. Create test file: test_fixtures.py

from django.test import TestCase

class FixturesTestCase(TestCase):
  fixtures = ['api/api/fixtures/testdata.json']
  def test_it(self):
    # implement your test here

5. Run the test to load fixtures into the database: python manage.py test api.tests

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I did this and I didn't have to give a path reference, the fixture file name was enough for me.

class SomeTest(TestCase):

    fixtures = ('myfixture.json',)

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You have two options, depending on whether you have a fixture, or you have a set of Python code to populate the data.

For fixtures, use cls.fixtures, like shown in an answer to this question,

class MyTestCase(django.test.TestCase):
    fixtures = ['/myapp/fixtures/dump.json',]

For Python, use cls.setUpTestData:

class MyTestCase(django.test.TestCase):
    @classmethod
    def setUpTestData(cls):
        cls.create_fixture()  # create_fixture is a custom function

setUpTestData is called by the TestCase.setUpClass.

You can use both, in which case fixtures is loaded first because setUpTestData is called after loading the fixtures.

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You need to import from django.test import TestCase and NOT from unittest import TestCase. That fixed the problem for me.

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If you have overridden setUpClass method, make sure you call super().setUpClass() method as the first line in the method. The code to load fixtures is in TestCase class.