Question

I want to write a unit test for a Django manage.py command that does a backend operation on a database table. How would I invoke the management command directly from code?

I don’t want to execute the command on the Operating System’s shell from tests.py because I can’t use the test environment set up using manage.py test (test database, test dummy email outbox, etc…)

Answer 1

The best way to test such things – extract needed functionality from command itself to standalone function or class. It helps to abstract from “command execution stuff” and write test without additional requirements.

But if you by some reason cannot decouple logic form command you can call it from any code using call_command method like this:

from django.core.management import call_command

call_command('my_command', 'foo', bar='baz')