Running django tutorial tests fail – No module named polls.tests

Question:

I’m playing with django 1.6 tutorial but i can’t run tests.
My project (name mydjango) and app structure (name is polls) are as shown below in a virtualenv. (.nja files are just created by ninja-ide the ide I’m using)

.
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── mydjango
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── mydjango.nja
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── settings.pyc
│   ├── templates
│   │   └── admin
│   │       └── base_site.html
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── urls.pyc
│   ├── wsgi.py
│   └── wsgi.pyc
├── polls
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── admin.pyc
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── models.pyc
│   ├── templates
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   └── polls
│   │       ├── detail.html
│   │       ├── index.html
│   │       ├── __init__.py
│   │       └── results.html
│   ├── tests.py
│   ├── tests.pyc
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── urls.pyc
│   ├── views.py
│   └── views.pyc
└── polls.nja

I followed the tutorial to understand how django works but I’m stuck in the test part.
As tutorial suggest I created a file named tests.py into the app folder, the pretty straightforward file is:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from django.test import TestCase
import datetime
from django.utils import timezone
from polls.models import Question

# Create your tests here.l  
class QuestionMethodTests(TestCase):

    def test_was_published_recently_with_future_poll(self):
        """
        was_published_recently dovrebbe ritornare falso se si mette una data nel futuro
        """
        future_question = Question(pub_date=timezone.now() + datetime.timedelta(hours=50))
        self.assertEqual(future_question.was_published_recently(), False)

then i installed unittest2 into the virtualenv with

$pip install unittest2

and run

$python manage.py test polls
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
E
======================================================================
ERROR: mydjango.polls.tests (unittest2.loader.ModuleImportFailure)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError: Failed to import test module: mydjango.polls.tests
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/sergio/.virtualenvs/django4/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/unittest2/loader.py", line 260, in _find_tests
    module = self._get_module_from_name(name)
  File "/home/sergio/.virtualenvs/django4/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/unittest2/loader.py", line 238, in _get_module_from_name
    __import__(name)
ImportError: No module named polls.tests


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

FAILED (errors=1)
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

No way to have the test working, also if don’t pass the app name it returns the same error:

$ python manage.py test
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
E
======================================================================
ERROR: mydjango.polls.tests (unittest2.loader.ModuleImportFailure)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError: Failed to import test module: mydjango.polls.tests
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/sergio/.virtualenvs/django4/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/unittest2/loader.py", line 260, in _find_tests
    module = self._get_module_from_name(name)
  File "/home/sergio/.virtualenvs/django4/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/unittest2/loader.py", line 238, in _get_module_from_name
    __import__(name)
ImportError: No module named polls.tests


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

FAILED (errors=1)
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

My INSTALLED_APPS are:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'south',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'polls',
)

What am I doing wrong?

Asked By: bre

||

Answers:

Anyhow running

$ python manage.py test polls.tests

It works, it’s enough for me right now:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
F
======================================================================
FAIL: test_was_published_recently_with_future_poll (polls.tests.QuestionMethodTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/sergio/.virtualenvs/django4/mydjango/polls/tests.py", line 17, in test_was_published_recently_with_future_poll
    self.assertEqual(future_question.was_published_recently(), False)
AssertionError: True != False
Answered By: bre

first answer didn’t work for me. im using win8, may be this is a reason.
in terminal try to change dir to ./polls and the run

python ../manage.py test polls
Answered By: mazdack

I had exactly the same issue with my Django project:

$ python manage test polls.tests

worked fine whereas the following failed with an import error:

$ python manage test polls
$ python manage test
(...)
ImportError: Failed to import test module: mydjango.polls.tests
Traceback (most recent call last):
(...)
ImportError: No module named polls.tests

Check carefully the error message: Django’s test runner tries to import the tests from mydjango.polls.tests where mydjango is the name of the root directory (the container for your project).

I fixed this issue by deleting the __init__.py file in mydjango directory (at the same level than manage.py file). This directory is not supposed to be a python module and it seems to mess up with Django’s test runner if it is the case.

So just deleting the _init_.py file should fix our problem:

$ rm mydjango/__init__.py
Answered By: pchiquet

For anyone else having the same problem, another reason for this to happen is if you have the same name for the root folder and the project folder.

For example:

mydjango
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── mydjango
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── wsgi.py
├── polls
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── models.py
|   ├── tests.py
│   ├── templates

running
./manage.py test

throws errors No module named polls.tests

to fix it simply rename the root folder to something else like :

mydjango_project
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── mydjango
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── wsgi.py
├── polls
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── models.py
|   ├── tests.py
│   ├── templates
Answered By: buluba89
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