In my last post I mentioned it might be an idea to [wrap up the Django test
database setup / teardown in a context manager][lastpost] for use with [Python’s
`with` statement][pythonwith]. Here’s my first stab, which seems to work.

from contextlib import contextmanager

@contextmanager
def test_db_connection():
“””A context manager for Django’s test runner.

For Python 2.5 you will need
from __future__ import with_statement
“””

from django.conf import settings
from django.test.utils import setup_test_environment, teardown_test_environment
from django.db import connection

setup_test_environment()

settings.DEBUG = False
verbosity = 0
interactive = False

old_name = settings.DATABASE_NAME
connection.creation.create_test_db(verbosity, autoclobber=not interactive)

yield connection

connection.creation.destroy_test_db(old_name, verbosity)
teardown_test_environment()

All of this requires Python 2.5 or later.

So with that snippet you could write a test something like so:

import unittest

class MyTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
def test_myModelTest(self):
with test_db_connection():
from myproject.myapp.models import MyModel

obj = MyModel()
obj.save()
self.assert_(obj.pk)

… and just as with Django’s `manage.py test` command the objects would be
created within the test database then destroyed when the
`with test_db_connection()` block is finished.

Everything’s going to be hunky dory.

[lastpost]: http://reliablybroken.com/b/2009/03/creating-a-django-test-database-for-unit-testing/
[pythonwith]: http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#context-managers