Execute Django tests in your github actions

When you are trying github actions with your django project, and your database is for example, PostgreSQL, could be a problem running tests in the workflow (personal experience 😋).

The problem is, you don't have an environment or DB engine running inside github actions platform, neither a server where github actions could run tests, then, when is turn of "run tests" step, you'll have this error.

So, ¿what do we do?.

Well, an easy way to fix this problem is check if your project is running in test mode to change your DB engine to SQLite inside settings.py, in this way, github actions could run all tests.

	import sys
	import os
	# ...
	# settings.py extra configurations
	# ...
	if sys.argv[1] == 'test':
	DATABASES = {
	'default': {
	'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
	'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
	}
	}
	else:
	DATABASES = {'default': 'psql://user:password@server:5432/database'}

view raw settings.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This is my first post in dev.to, I hope could help somebody with the same problem I had.

Github actions workflow

Comments

[Dalean Barnett]

How about service containers? Building an application that depends on PostgreSQL and then executing tests based on Sqlite could pose a problem.

[Sarah Abd]

Haha I've faced to the same problem and I've got another solution, I write an article on that also : dev.to/s_abderemane/how-to-use-doc...

[Guillermo Alfonso Morales]

I was thinking in docker for a second post, you won 😊

Thanks for the feedback.