mongoengine connect() in settings.py testing problem

Question

I want to be able to do conditional connect() based on either I started django in testing mode or not.

in my settings.py I use mongoengine connect() method to connect to

Answer 1

While it is possible to do that, it is easier and common practice to have 2 settings files. One possible configuration could be:

You have 2 settings files, lsettings.py that doesn't connect and settings.py that does

from lsettings import *
mongodb.connect()

So, while locally testing you can:

python manage.py test --settings=lsettings

And it doesn't connect.

tl;dr: It is easier to manage configuration differences by having multiple configuration files that import each other conditionally rather than trying to have conditional parameters within the same settings file. YMMV.