python - Nose not discovering package level tests in Django

Question

I'm setting up a directory structure for my Django app to separate functional and unit tests. I am using nose as the test runner for my Django project.

At the root of the Django project, I have a folder called "tests" that has this structure:

tests
├── __init__.py
├── functional
│   ├── __init__.py
└── unit
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── data.py
    ├── tests.py

If I want to run just the unit tests, should I not be able to use the following from the project root:

$ nosetests tests.unit

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 0 tests in 0.000s

OK

As you can see, this doesn't find the tests in the tests.py file.

However, when I run using the directory structure, the tests are found as they should be:

$ nosetests tests/unit/
E
# .. Some errors I expected because settings are not initialized when called this way
-----------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

FAILED (errors=1)

What am I missing? My main issue is that I have a setup function in tests.unit.__init__.py that should be called for creating the data in the test DB for the upcoming tests.

Thanks

Roundly

might you need to include import unit in the first init? (just throwing this out there) – Satire

@Satire don't think so, as I can import the unit.tests module from the same directory using the python command-line python -c 'import tests.unit' – Roundly

Did you try to run nose in verbose mode? try using -v and -vv to see if they give any hint about the test discovery. – Hercegovina

Answer 1

This all depends on what kind of code is in tests/unit/__init__.py

When you say

nosetests tests.unit

You are pointing to unit/__init__.py not the directory unit/ thus if you had no tests in your __init__.py module then nothing would be run. So it is understandable when you say you used the directory path and then your tests started working.

You mention

What am I missing? My main issue is that I have a setup function in tests.unit.init.py that should be called for creating the data in the test DB for the upcoming tests.

It is likely that although you have a setup function in __init__.py you may have not ever imported your test functions into __init__.py

One quick fix to this would be to add this line in __init__.py

from tests.unit.tests import *

That said it is really not very wise to be putting any code in __init__.py at all and if you have code that returns some kind of configuration data I would recommend creating a new library module with functions that will return configuration data to your tests

Dianadiandra

Thanks for the answer! My understanding of nose's discovery feature is that it would like for all modules that matched the pattern. So when I point it to tests.unit, that it would find tests.py, and all the test functions inside. But now I added from .tests import *, which seems to do the trick. Is there no way to let nose find the tests automatically, instead of importing them manually? – Roundly

Yeah just do nosetests unit/ if you want all the tests found automatically within the directory. As I mentioned, when you say nosetests tests.unit, you are telling nose to find all tests in a specific module. If that module has no tests, well then you're out of luck. I don't use much module notation though so I can't speak much more in depth. Maybe look at the source code at github.com/nose-devs/nose to find out more – Dianadiandra