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?

Answer 1

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