Make Django Tests Always Rebuild the Database if It Exists

2020-01-13 Test Machine

If you use Django’s test runner, you’ll probably have encountered this message:

$ python manage.py test
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
Got an error creating the test database: database "myproject_test" already exists

Type 'yes' if you would like to try deleting the test database 'myproject_test', or 'no' to cancel:

The main reason this happens is that the last test run crashed and it left the database around. It can be annoying when you start the test run, go for a cup of tea, and come back to this prompt still waiting, rather than a complete test run.

Here’s how to make Django always rebuild the database in this case.

We’ll do it by extending test with our own custom management command.

Create a new test management command inside one of your Django apps, for example testapp/management/commands/test.py. Then add this content:

from django.core.management.commands.test import Command as BaseCommand


class Command(BaseCommand):
    def handle(self, *test_labels, **options):
        # Wrap Django's built-in test command to always delete the database if
        # it exists
        options["interactive"] = False
        return super().handle(*test_labels, **options)

This works by intercepting the normal handle() method to first always set the interactive option to False. This is the same as always passing the --noinput command line flag, the documented way of forcing a database rebuild.

Fin

Hope this saves you some time from stalled test runs,

—Adam

Newly updated: my book Boost Your Django DX now covers Django 5.0 and Python 3.12.

One summary email a week, no spam, I pinky promise.

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Tags: django