How do I unit test Django views on the Google App Engine?

Question

I am struggling to run unit tests using the Django Client class on the Google App Engine. I downloaded GAEUnit (v2.0a for Django) and I am trying to use that as my testing framework (maybe I should rather be using something else?)

I copy all the GAEUnit files into my project root as instructed, and I modify my app.yaml file. Currently app.yaml looks as follows:

application: myapp
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1

handlers:
- url: /static
  static_dir: static

- url: /.*
  script: django_bootstrap.py

- url: /test.*
  script: gaeunit.py

I also modified settings.py to add gaeunit as an application... (snippet from settings.py)

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'gaeunit',
)

My unit test class resides in the 'test' folder and looks as follows (very simple):

import unittest

class Test(unittest.TestCase):

    def testName(self):
        self.assertTrue(False)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    #import sys;sys.argv = ['', 'Test.testName']
    unittest.main()

However, when I try to run my application by navigating to http://localhost:8080, it fails with the following error:

ViewDoesNotExist at /
Could not import gaeunit.gaeunit. Error was: No module named gaeunit

gaeunit.py does definitely exist in the folder. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I managed to figure out what was wrong here. I made two mistakes:

1. In app.yaml, url: /test.* had to be before url:/.* (otherwise the /test URL would be matched to /.* before getting to the /test.* handler)
2. Beware of copying all the files from the GAEUnit package into your project root! The GAEUnit folder contains a urls.py file that will overwrite your one if you are not paying attention. This was happening in my case. I simply restored my original urls.py.
3. When working with the django test Client, and if you intend to access the response.template or response.context properties, you need to ensure that you call *django.test.utils.setup_test_environment()*, otherwise template and context will be Nothing. I call this in my test module, right at the bottom.

Result: working unit tests!