How can I call a custom Django manage.py command directly from a test driver?

Question

I want to write a unit test for a Django manage.py command that does a backend operation on a database table. How would I invoke the management command directly from code?

Answer 1

The Django documentation on the call_command fails to mention that out must be redirected to sys.stdout. The example code should read:

from django.core.management import call_command
from django.test import TestCase
from django.utils.six import StringIO
import sys

class ClosepollTest(TestCase):
    def test_command_output(self):
        out = StringIO()
        sys.stdout = out
        call_command('closepoll', stdout=out)
        self.assertIn('Expected output', out.getvalue())