[TIP] Running tests of externally-maintained apps when testing Django projects

[John Wong]

Hi,

I am not a testing expert, but my development falls in this domain as well
since my django site is only used as a web interface. I don't even use
django model except for registration (which has to authorized through LDAP)
and django session (the default stuff).

>Is it worth running the tests of these externally-maintained apps when
> testing the site as a whole?
Isn't this a system test rather than unit-test? Yes. You want to find out
whether they work or not, right?


>it'sarguable that someone else would be keeping an eye on the unit tests,
so
> there's no need for me to run them.

Isn't the whole point of unittest really testing the "correctness" of an
individual unit (which usually means a method / a function) that actually
DOES something (rather than just initialize some data, or print, etc).
If you don't run integration test on these external apps as a whole, you
can't assure the quality of the system as a whole. The idea would be
"scope". Test the scope / objective of the service (referring to the
purpose of using this particular app in your main site) within the main
site, and test the untested purposes within the app level (which could be
itself a django project)....

A situation would be, say My-Site (your main Django project) has an upload
feature, which runs on a different Django PROJECT (another django site)
called My Upload. You will need to perform integration tests on both
projects. If the inetgration is so soft that you literally take in the file
object and pass it to your upload django service, you really just need a
few simple, quick integration tests on the main site to test
upload(relevant to your main site). If the upload service ITSELF does many
things, test those "untested" one within the upload service django project.

John


On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 4:04 PM, Alexander Dutton <lists at alexdutton.co.uk>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Best practice question. I maintain a Django-based site that comprises
> various externally-maintained apps and some apps that are site-specific.
> Should I be viewing these as solely unit
> tests, or as integration tests?
>
> Most of the externally-maintained apps (e.g. object_permissions) come
> with their own settings files and are invoked like:
>
> $ django-admin test --settings=object_permissions.tests.settings
>
> These settings often declare a specific ROOT_URLCONF and other settings
> (e.g. TESTING = True). Just including the app in INSTALLED_APPS is
> liable to result in test failures. I imagine I'd have to patch
> ROOT_URLCONF for each app, which means a custom test runner and general
> ugliness. It also doesn't suffice for integration testing, and it's
> arguable that someone else would be keeping an eye on the unit tests, so
> there's no need for me to run them.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Yours,
>
> Alex
>
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