Running integration tests separately from unit tests in django

Question

The convention for creating tests in django is to place tests in modules named tests_*.py and to run then as python manage.py test.

This will run all tests defined tests in all modules named tests.

The challenge I have come across is that integration tests may require significant setup of resources e.g. connection to external services. I would imagine mocking out those services in integration tests would cause integration tests to loose their meaning.

I am inquiring therefore of the best practice in running only unit tests and only run integration tests when unit tests are running properly.

The only way I can imagine is to place integration tests in files named with a different pattern such as integration_*.py and then use the pattern parameter when running integration tests as specified by the django documentation

Like this python manage.py test --pattern="integration_*".

In this way when python manage.py test is called integration tests will be ignored.

Does anyone have a suggestion or recommendation.

Answer 1

You can use Tagging test to handle this. Try to tag your test by a name then:

./manage.py test --tag=integration