3 Ways to Disable Django Migrations for Unit Tests

Table of Content

• How to Ignore Django Migrations for Unit Tests
• Wrap Off

In Django framework, the model migrations are certainly a great feature.

However, it can quickly become annoying when running tests because it slows down the process.

This is worst if you have a large migration history.

Here is a tutorial on how you can speed up your tests by disabling migrations for unit testing.

How to Ignore Django Migrations for Unit Tests

Create a file named test_settings.py. Or, If your setting configurations are divided into multiple environments, create a file called tests.py or ci.py in the settings module.

1. Disable Migrations with MIGRATION_MODULES settings configuration

   For Django versions >= 1.9, a viable option is using the MIGRATION_MODULES setting, which is intended to define a custom name for an app's migration module in a dictionary format.

   However, you can use it in a test settings file to skip migrations when unit testing your project.

   The tables will still be created for the apps' models that are listed.

   This method is mostly useful if you want to control the list of apps to skip migrations file.

   We normally keep these settings in its own settings file, so we can run test with or without migrations based on the input in the command-line.

   However, if you use the MIGRATION_MODULES in your main project settings, use the command

   migrate  --run-syncdb
   

   option if you want to create tables for the app when running the test.

   Here's how to disable migrations with MIGRATION_MODULES settings configuration:

   	from settings import *
   
   	MIGRATION_MODULES = {
   	    'auth': None,
   	    'contenttypes': None,
   	    'default': None,