Django: How to create a model dynamically just for testing

Question

I have a Django app that requires a settings attribute in the form of:

RELATED_MODELS = (\'appname1.modelname1.attribute1\',
                  \         


        

Answer 1

I chose a slightly different, albeit more coupled, approach to dynamically creating models just for testing.

I keep all my tests in a tests subdirectory that lives in my files app. The models.py file in the tests subdirectory contains my test-only models. The coupled part comes in here, where I need to add the following to my settings.py file:

# check if we are testing right now
TESTING = 'test' in sys.argv

if TESTING:
    # add test packages that have models
    INSTALLED_APPS += ['files.tests',]

I also set db_table in my test model, because otherwise Django would have created the table with the name tests_, which may have caused a conflict with other test models in another app. Here's my my test model:

class Recipe(models.Model):

    '''Test-only model to test out thumbnail registration.'''

    dish_image = models.ImageField(upload_to='recipes/')

    class Meta:
        db_table = 'files_tests_recipe'