October 21, 2020

Django comes with a handful of different base classes for unit tests, three of which we'll explore:

• SimpleTestCase — An extension of unittest.TestCase that adds new assertion helpers
• TransactionTestCase — A class that allows unit tests to set up their own top-level transactions
• TestCase — A class that wraps each unit test run inside of a transaction

The naming is confusing. One would expect TransactionTestCase to run tests in a transaction, but it doesn't work that way.

The class hierarchy looks like this:

• unittest.TestCase
  • django.test.SimpleTestCase
    • django.test.TransactionTestCase
      • django.test.TestCase

Most Django apps are going to use TestCase, but some may need TransactionTestCase. So let's focus on those.

<aside> 💡 Djblets and Review Board have their own specialized classes

If you're developing code for either of these, you'll need to build unit tests off of those classes. See Writing Unit Tests.

</aside>

TransactionTestCase

As stated above, this class is best used when you have unit tests that need to be able to manage their own transaction. The name is confusing. TransactionlessTestCase might be a better name.