Providing data for unit tests

Besides not suffering from some of the disadvantages of doctests, unit tests provide some additional useful features for Django applications. One of these features is the ability to load the database with test data prior to the test run. There are a few different ways this can be done; each is discussed in detail in the following sections.

Providing data in test fixtures

The first way to provide test data for unit tests is to load them from files, called fixtures. We will cover this method by first developing an example test that can benefit from pre-loaded test data, then showing how to create a fixture file, and finally describing how to ensure that the fixture file is loaded as part of the test.

Example test that needs test data

Before jumping into the details of how to provide a test with pre-loaded data, it would help to have an example of a test that could use this feature. So far our simple tests have gotten by pretty easily by just creating the data they...