django-admin-tests

Why

Admin pages break quietly. A renamed field in list_display, a get_queryset that blows up on a related lookup, a permission tweak that locks out the wrong people — none of it shows up until someone opens the page.

This package asserts that every ModelAdmin you register still serves its changelist, add and change views, as part of your test run, under either manage.py test or pytest. No test per model.

Install

pip install django-admin-tests

Requires Python 3.10+ and Django 4.2+. The only runtime dependency is Django itself.

Quickstart

Put this in any test module your runner already collects:

from django_admin_tests import testcases


class AdminSmokeTest(testcases.AdminSmokeTestCase):
    pass

That's the whole setup. Run your tests as usual:

pytest
# or
python manage.py test

from django_admin_tests.testcases import AdminSmokeTestCase  # base class runs too


class AdminSmokeTest(AdminSmokeTestCase):
    pass

Customizing

Subclassing is also how you adjust behavior:

from django_admin_tests import testcases

from myapp.models import InternalReport, LegacyThing


class AdminSmokeTest(testcases.AdminSmokeTestCase):
    # Admins that intentionally deny access:
    model_allowed_status_codes = {InternalReport: {403}}
    # Admins to skip entirely:
    excluded_models = {LegacyThing}

pytest plugin

If you use pytest, the bundled plugin can collect the smoke tests without you writing a test file at all. It is opt-in — installing this package will never silently add tests to your suite:

# pyproject.toml
[tool.pytest.ini_options]
django_admin_tests_auto = true

There's no class to subclass in this mode, so configure it through Django settings instead.

Settings

# settings.py
ADMIN_TESTS_MODEL_ALLOWED_STATUS_CODES = {"myapp.InternalReport": [403]}
ADMIN_TESTS_EXCLUDE = ["myapp.LegacyThing"]

Resolution order is class attribute → Django setting → built-in default, so a subclass always wins over settings.

Change views need an object

To load a change view, there has to be something to change. An instance is resolved per model in this order:

• A factory you registered for that model
• Any existing row
• A minimal instance built automatically from the model's fields

If none of those work — most often a required self-referential or circular foreign key — that model's change-view check is skipped with a warning, not failed. Register a factory to cover it:

from django_admin_tests import register_factory

from myapp.models import Tricky


def make_tricky():
    return Tricky.objects.create(...)


register_factory(Tricky, make_tricky)

Call it anywhere that runs at startup — an AppConfig.ready(), or conftest.py. The auto-builder is written in-house and pulls in no third-party dependency.

Custom user models

The test client authenticates as a superuser it creates itself, using the default User fields. If your AUTH_USER_MODEL needs something else, supply a factory:

class AdminSmokeTest(testcases.AdminSmokeTestCase):
    user_factory = staticmethod(my_superuser_factory)

Turning it off

The tests are tagged django_admin_tests:

python manage.py test --exclude-tag=django_admin_tests
pytest -m "not django_admin_tests"

Known limitations

• Models whose change view can't be instantiated are skipped with a warning rather than failed. That's deliberate — a smoke test shouldn't fail because a model is awkward to construct — but an un-covered model can go unnoticed. The warning names it.
• The auto-builder doesn't try to satisfy custom save() or clean() requirements. Use register_factory for those.
• Custom AUTH_USER_MODEL support is the user_factory hook only; there's no auto-detection of required fields.
• Many-to-many fields aren't populated — they aren't needed for the views to render.