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Overview

Useful additions to Django's default TestCase, from REVSYS.

Let's face it, writing tests isn't always fun. Part of the reason for that is all of the boilerplate you end up writing. django-test-plus is an attempt to cut down on some of that when writing Django tests. We guarantee it will increase the time before you get carpal tunnel by at least 3 weeks!

If you would like to get started testing your Django apps, or improve how your team is testing, we offer TestStart to help your team dramatically improve your productivity.

Why use django-test-plus?

It is additive. test_plus.test.TestCase subclasses Django's, so everything you already know still works and you can adopt the helpers one at a time.

  • Reverse URLs inline. self.get('my-url-name') instead of importing reverse and threading it through every call. Args and kwargs pass straight through, and an already-reversed URL works too.
  • Assert on status codes readably. self.assert_http_200_ok() rather than self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200), for most of the status codes.
  • Skip the response variable. The last response and its context are stored for you, so the assertion helpers default to them.
  • Create users without ceremony. make_user() builds one with a sensible username, email, and password, takes a permission list, and honours a factory-boy factory if your User model needs one.
  • Check authentication in a line. assertLoginRequired() for any URL and HTTP method, plus a login() context manager for testing what each user should see.
  • Keep query counts honest. assertNumQueriesLessThan() and assertGoodView() catch N+1 regressions without pinning an exact number that churns on every change.
  • Unit test class-based views directly. CBVTestCase invokes a view's methods without the URL resolution, middleware, and template stack, when that machinery is not what you are testing.
  • Works with unittest, pytest, and DRF. The same helpers, three ways. See below.

Maintained by REVSYS, who have been building and maintaining Django projects since before 1.0.

Installation

pip install django-test-plus

Support

  • Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14, including the 3.14 free-threaded build (3.14t)
  • Django 4.2 LTS, 5.1, 5.2 LTS, 6.0, and 6.1

The same test, three ways

The helpers are identical whichever style you write in.

unittest

Inherit from test_plus.test.TestCase rather than the normal django.test.TestCase:

from test_plus.test import TestCase

class MyViewTests(TestCase):

    def test_the_view(self):
        self.get('my-url-name')
        self.response_200()
        self.assertResponseContains('<p>Hello, World!</p>')

pytest

Ask for the tp fixture and every method above is available on it:

def test_the_view(tp):
    tp.get('my-url-name')
    tp.response_200()
    tp.assertResponseContains('<p>Hello, World!</p>')

pytest with Django REST Framework

tp_api is the same thing backed by DRF's APIClient, so you can post JSON and assert on the result:

def test_the_api(tp_api):
    response = tp_api.post('my-api-view', extra={'format': 'json'})
    assert response.status_code == 200

Anything that touches the database needs pytest-django's db fixture alongside tp. That covers make_user(), the login() context, and the query counting helpers. See pytest usage for the details.

Where to next

llms.txt

This documentation is available in the llms.txt format, a Markdown convention suited to LLMs and AI coding assistants.

Two files are published:

  • llms.txt: a short description of the project plus links to each section of the documentation. The structure is described here.
  • llms-full.txt: the same index with the content of every page included inline, including the generated API reference.

Every page is also published as Markdown alongside its HTML, so you can link an assistant at a single section rather than the whole corpus. Append .md to the page name:

https://django-test-plus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.md
https://django-test-plus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/methods.md
https://django-test-plus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference.md

These files are not picked up automatically by IDEs or coding agents today, but most will use them if you supply a link or paste the text.