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

Django debug settings


Django has a number of settings that control the collection and presentation of debug information. The primary one is named DEBUG; it broadly controls whether the server operates in development (if DEBUG is True) or production mode.

In development mode, the end-user is expected to be a site developer. Thus, if an error arises during processing of a request, it is useful to include specific technical information about the error in the response sent to the web browser. This is not useful in production mode, when the user is expected to be simply a general site user.

This section describes three Django settings that are useful for debugging during development. Additional settings are used during production to control what errors should be reported, and where error reports should be sent. These additional settings will be discussed in the section on handling problems in production.

The DEBUG and TEMPLATE_DEBUG settings

DEBUG is the main debug setting. One of the most obvious...