Run Django tests with nosetests

My python apps testing is performed on the remote server with command nosetests. I cannot modify the way tests are started nor can I add options to it. I have Django app with tests, but tests are not working properly.

My project structure:

project
├── README.md
├── setup.py
├── mysite
│   ├── blog
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── models.py
│   │   ├── tests.py
|   |   ├── ...
│   ├── db.sqlite3
│   ├── manage.py
│   ├── mysite
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── settings.py
|   |   ├── ...

Command nosetests is executed in project directory. I want it to properly run tests.py which has 2 Django testcases. I tried creating tests directory in project root and invoke tests with DiscoverRunner):

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mysite.settings'
test_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__)) # one level up
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(test_dir, 'mysite'))

class ServerTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_runtests(self):
        django.setup()
        self.test_runner = DiscoverRunner(verbosity=1, interactive=True, failfast=False)
        failures = self.test_runner.run_tests(['mysite'])
        self.assertEqual(failures, 0)

It works but the problem is all the tests are considered as a single test and wrong reports are produced by the server.

Another solution: if I add empty __init__.py to project/mysite nose discovers tests.py but the tests fail because 'Apps are not loaded yet' which probably means I have to invoke django.setup() earlier but I don't know how to do it. I found a plugin for the nose which does it but I cannot install plugins or alter options on the remote machine.

Any ideas how to make any of my approaches solve the problem?

Solution

Firsts things first, you should install and configure django-nose if you haven't done so already:

pip install django-nose

Then add it on your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'django_nose'
)

TEST_RUNNER = 'django_nose.NoseTestSuiteRunner'

Now for the nosetests command to run correctly, you can create a folder named tests with the following structure:

project
├── mysite
│   ├── blog
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── models.py
|   |   ├── ...
│   ├── mysite
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── settings.py
|   |   ├── ...
│   ├── tests
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── test_a_whole_class_of_methods.py  
│   │   ├── test_a_whole_view.py  
│   │   ├── test_one_of_my_methods.py
│   │   ├── test_another_one_of_my_methods.py  
|   |   ├── ...
│   ├── db.sqlite3
│   ├── manage.py
├── README.md
├── setup.py

DON'T FORGET THE __init__.py FILE INSIDE THE tests FOLDER!!!

Now when you run nosetests from the root of your project, it will run every test in the tests folder:

~ $ cd path/to/project
path/to/project $ nosetests