Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Overview of this book

Bugs are a time consuming burden during software development. Django's built-in test framework and debugging support help lessen this burden. This book will teach you quick and efficient techniques for using Django and Python tools to eradicate bugs and ensure your Django application works correctly. This book will walk you step by step through development of a complete sample Django application. You will learn how best to test and debug models, views, URL configuration, templates, and template tags. This book will help you integrate with and make use of the rich external environment of test and debugging tools for Python and Django applications. The book starts with a basic overview of testing. It will highlight areas to look out for while testing. You will learn about different kinds of tests available, and the pros and cons of each, and also details of test extensions provided by Django that simplify the task of testing Django applications. You will see an illustration of how external tools that provide even more sophisticated testing features can be integrated into Django's framework. On the debugging front, the book illustrates how to interpret the extensive debugging information provided by Django's debug error pages, and how to utilize logging and other external tools to learn what code is doing.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Chapter 10. When All Else Fails: Getting Outside Help

Sometimes we run into problems that do not seem to be caused by our own code. Though following the documentation to the best of our understanding, the results we are getting don't match what we expect. One of the benefits of building on open source code such as Django is that we can delve into its code and figure out exactly where things are going wrong. However, that may not be the best use of our time.

Most often a better first step in tracking down such problems is to consult community resources. Perhaps someone else has already encountered the problem we are facing and found a fix or workaround. If so, we can likely save a lot of time by taking advantage of their experience rather than finding our own solution to the problem.

This chapter describes the Django community resources and illustrates how to use them. Specifically, in this chapter we will:

  • Walk through the discovery of a bug that existed in the Django 1.1 release and caused...