How to test Django models against a DB without manage.py in a standalone package using pytest and GitHub Actions?

Context:

• I am developing a standalone Django package that is intended to be added to existing Django projects.
• This package includes Django models with methods that interact directly with a database.
• I want to write tests for these methods using pytest and pytest-django.
• I need to run these tests in a CI/CD environment, specifically using GitHub Actions.

Problems Encountered:

1. Database Setup:

   • Since this is a standalone package, it does not include a manage.py file.
   • This makes it challenging to run typical Django management commands like migrate to set up the database schema for testing.

2. Table Creation:

   • I encounter errors indicating that the table for my model does not exist because the necessary migrations are not applied.
   • This is problematic because my tests need to interact with the database tables directly.

3. Fixtures and Setup:

   • I need to ensure the database tables are created and populated with initial data before the tests run.
   • My attempts to use pytest fixtures and manually create database tables within the tests have not been successful.

What I've Tried:

• Using pytest fixtures to set up the initial database state.
• Manually creating database tables within the test setup using direct SQL execution.
• Using the mixer library to populate the database with test data.

Desired Outcome:

• A reliable method to ensure the necessary database tables for my models are created before running the tests.
• Proper setup and teardown of test data within the standalone package.
• Integration with CI/CD pipelines like GitHub Actions without relying on manage.py commands.

Additional Information:

• I am using an in-memory SQLite database for faster test execution.
• The test environment should be isolated and not rely on external databases or services.

I am looking for guidance on how to approach this problem or best practices for testing Django models in a standalone package using pytest and pytest-django. Any advice or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

You don't need manage.py to run migrate. The same commands are available via the django-admin command that Django installs, but you'll need to set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable that manage.py would ordinarily set.

IOW, if you'd generally run python manage.py and your project settings are myproject.settings, you can just as well run env DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings django-admin migrate.

That said, that's not your issue here – pytest-django will deal with setting up and tearing down a testing database for you. Generally, when developing a Django package, you'd have a testing project and app next to it to host the package for development use.

An example (of a standalone package, tested with GitHub Actions) is here (repository maintained by yours truly); lippukala is the reusable package, and lippukala_test_app is the package that hosts the settings for pytest-django to use; there's a stanza

[tool.pytest.ini_options]
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE = "lippukala_test_app.settings"

in the pyproject.toml file that makes that work.