Should Django models be tested?

Question

Should I test Django Models? So far I've been writing tests for the views only. What else could and should be tested?

Answers to your question will be opinionated. My opinion would be you should have "enough" tests to suit your needs — Sayse, Aug 19 '15 at 06:47
Although I agree with @Sayse that writing test cases is opinionated. You can or you can not write test cases its totally upto your level of managing code and designing it. — Arpit Goyal, Aug 19 '15 at 07:13

Arpit Goyal · Answer 1 · 2015-08-19T07:27:26.983

Django models are testable. For instance you can write test cases for a property you write for the model.

class Candidate(models.Model):
    first_name = StringField()
    last_name = StringField()

    @property
    def name(self):
        return self.first_name + ' ' + self.last_name

Now you can write the test case like this for this model. First create a model instance

class TestCandidateModel(SimpleTestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        self.candidate = Candidate.objects.create(first_name = 'ABC', second_name = 'XYZ')

    def test_returns_candidate_name(self):
        self.assertEqual(self.candidate.name, 'ABC XYZ')

that my test would tell :D – Arpit Goyal Aug 19 '15 at 07:27 — Arpit Goyal, Aug 19 '15 at 07:27

hspandher · Answer 2 · 2015-08-19T07:24:57.050

What should be tested? If you want a short answer, "EVERYTHING excluding external libraries". Your tests needs to be as granular as possible. If there is some method that is defined on models, then instead of indirectly testing it in views, you should test it in models, and just make sure that method is being called in views. So for a typical django application, you should test - models, managers, forms, views, serializers, handlers, even middlewares (as I said everything)

Should Django models be tested?

2 Answers2