Question

I have a Django (v1.4, using Postgresql) project which I’ve written a bunch of working unittests for. These use FactoryBoy to generate most of their data.

I’m now starting to write some integration tests using LiveServerTestCase with Selenium. I’ve just realised that my tests and the live test server use different databases. Which means that data created by factories in my tests aren’t available to Selenium.

I’m not sure of the best way to progress. I think I could use fixtures to supply data that would work, although this is a pain having got this far using factories instead.

Is there a way I can continue to use factories to generate data that will work for my Selenium tests? Really I’d like my tests and LiveServerTestCase to use the same database.

Answer 1

Have you tried using sqlite as your database backend for tests?

When using an in-memory SQLite database to run the tests, the same
database connection will be shared by two threads in parallel: the
thread in which the live server is run and the thread in which the
test case is run.

from Django docs

If you’re not using anything beyond regular ORM, you might benefit from test speedups as well.