Django reusable app with package name format cannot be found when testing outside project

Question

I'm trying to test a Django reusable app that was organized as Python packages. Here is the directory tree:

reusableapp
├── __init__.py
└── submodule
    ├── __init__.py
    └── app
        ├── __init__.py
        ├── models.py
        ├── tests.py
        └── views.py

My version of Django is 1.5. To pick the application for testing I have the following code based on the one exposed here:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""
Description: Execute tests from outside Django's project
"""


import os
import sys

from django.conf import settings


DIRNAME = os.path.dirname(__file__)

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "reusableapp.submodule.app"
]

settings.configure(
    DEBUG=True,
    DATABASES={
        "default": {
            "ENGINE": "django.db.backends.sqlite3",
        }
    },
    INSTALLED_APPS=tuple(INSTALLED_APPS),
    CACHES={
        "default": {
            "BACKEND": "django.core.cache.backends.locmem.LocMemCache",
        }
    },
)


if __name__ == "__main__":

    from django.test.simple import DjangoTestSuiteRunner

    test_runner = DjangoTestSuiteRunner(verbosity=1)
    failures = test_runner.run_tests(INSTALLED_APPS)
    if failures:
        sys.exit(failures)

But when I execute it I got the following error (using virtualenv):

(reusableapp) $ python runtests.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "runtests.py", line 48, in <module>
    failures = test_runner.run_tests(INSTALLED_APPS)
  File "/var/lib/virtualenvs/reusableapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/test/simple.py", line 369, in run_tests
    suite = self.build_suite(test_labels, extra_tests)
  File "/var/lib/virtualenvs/reusableapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/test/simple.py", line 254, in build_suite
    suite.addTest(build_test(label))
  File "/var/lib/virtualenvs/reusableapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/test/simple.py", line 102, in build_test
    app_module = get_app(parts[0])
  File "/var/lib/virtualenvs/reusableapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/models/loading.py", line 160, in get_app
    raise ImproperlyConfigured("App with label %s could not be found" % app_label)
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: App with label reusableapp could not be found

I've searched in the Django documentation about reusable apps and formats but it says nothing beyond "just a Python package that is specifically intended for use in a Django project. An app may also use common Django conventions, such as having a models.py file"

Do you know some explicit convention/requeriment that explicits the reusable app format? If not, have you faced this situation? Is there a way to load the app by force?

Thank you and best regards.

Gaurav · Answer 1 · 2013-11-04T13:28:00.893

Lets say your app path is /parentdir/reusableapp/submodule/app

First make sure you have /parentdir/ in your PYTHONPATH by running following command in python interpreter :-

>>> import os
>>> os.environ['PYTHONPATH'].split(os.pathsep)

Probably you will not see this path, add following line in your django project manage.py file.

sys.path.append('/parentdir/')

Also -
Did you check setting django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader in TEMPLATE_LOADERS, If it's not already there try to add it like this -

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
    'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader',
    'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader',
)

django document on template subdirectories - https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/api/#using-subdirectories

Hope it will help.

This could be used if I am inside a Django project. What I have is the source code of a reusable app outside a project using that snippet to execute the test. — ariel17, Nov 04 '13 at 13:23

Django reusable app with package name format cannot be found when testing outside project

1 Answers1