Django: How to create a model dynamically just for testing

I have a Django app that requires a settings attribute in the form of:

RELATED_MODELS = ('appname1.modelname1.attribute1',
                  'appname1.modelname2.attribute2', 
                  'appname2.modelname3.attribute3', ...)

Then hooks their post_save signal to update some other fixed model depending on the attributeN defined.

I would like to test this behaviour and tests should work even if this app is the only one in the project (except for its own dependencies, no other wrapper app need to be installed). How can I create and attach/register/activate mock models just for the test database? (or is it possible at all?)

Solutions that allow me to use test fixtures would be great.

Edit Report

Here's the pattern that I'm using to do this.

I've written this method that I use on a subclassed version of TestCase. It goes as follows:

@classmethod
def create_models_from_app(cls, app_name):
    """
    Manually create Models (used only for testing) from the specified string app name.
    Models are loaded from the module "<app_name>.models"
    """
    from django.db import connection, DatabaseError
    from django.db.models.loading import load_app

    app = load_app(app_name)
    from django.core.management import sql
    from django.core.management.color import no_style
    sql = sql.sql_create(app, no_style(), connection)
    cursor = connection.cursor()
    for statement in sql:
        try:
            cursor.execute(statement)
        except DatabaseError, excn:
            logger.debug(excn.message)
            pass

Then, I create a special test-specific models.py file in something like myapp/tests/models.py that's not included in INSTALLED_APPS.

In my setUp method, I call create_models_from_app('myapp.tests') and it creates the proper tables.

The only "gotcha" with this approach is that you don't really want to create the models ever time setUp runs, which is why I catch DatabaseError. I guess the call to this method could go at the top of the test file and that would work a little better.

answered 2012-04-18T21:55:11.757

Django: How to create a model dynamically just for testing

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