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 3. Testing 1, 2, 3: Basic Unit Testing

In the previous chapter, we began learning about testing Django applications by writing some doctests for the Survey model. In the process, we experienced some of the advantages and disadvantages of doctests. When discussing some of the disadvantages, unit tests were mentioned as an alternative test approach that avoids some doctest pitfalls. In this chapter, we will start to learn about unit tests in detail. Specifically, we will:

  • Re-implement the Survey doctests as unit tests

  • Assess how the equivalent unit test version compares to the doctests in terms of ease of implementation and susceptibility to the doctest caveats discussed in the previous chapter

  • Begin learning some of the additional capabilities of unit tests as we extend the existing tests to cover additional functions