Django manage.py : Is it possible to pass command line argument (for unit testing)

Question

Is it possible to pass command line arguments to Django\'s manage.py script, specifically for unit tests? i.e. if I do something like

manage.py test         


        

Answer 1

Django allows adding custom commandline options from the testrunner class. You can create a subclass of the default testrunner class and add your own options, and then let django use your custom testrunner as follows.

For example, create a testrunner.py in your Django project directory, containing:

from django.test.runner import DiscoverRunner

class TestRunner(DiscoverRunner):
    def __init__(self, option=None, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(**kwargs)

        print("Passed option: {}".format(option))

    @classmethod
    def add_arguments(cls, parser):
        DiscoverRunner.add_arguments(parser)

        parser.add_argument('-o', '--option', help='Example option')

This is a testrunner that derives from the default runner (so it works just like the default), except that it tells django to add an extra commandline option (in the add_arguments() class method) and processes the value of this extra option in the constructor. To run with this new runner, pass its name as follows:

./manage.py test --testrunner=testrunner.TestRunner -o foo

Of course you can put this class anywhere else, as long as you pass the full import name to it on the commandline.

Note that you must use --testrunner=foo, you cannot use two separate arguments (--testrunner foo), since then the extra arguments do not work. A fix is pending: https://github.com/django/django/pull/10307

This example just prints the option value, but you'll want to pass it to your testcase somehow. I couldn't find any quick info on how to pass options to unittest testcases, but you could probably just use a global (module level) variable or class variable for this (which is not so re-entrant and elegant, but is easy and works).