Running Flask Tests without installing the app

| ci | programming | python |

The Flask Docs have a great section for testing. However they assume that you have the app installed with pip install -e . which I almost never do. (Maybe I should start?) I have had trouble with this approach. So one little hack to inject your app into the searchable python path is to do something like this:

export BLOG_PATH=$(pwd) && python tests/blog_tests.py
We use \$(pwd) so that this will "just work" no matter which computer you run it on (i.e. test, dev, other persons dev) Then in yourtests/blog_tests.py file you import your flask app like this: 
sys.path.insert(0, os.environ.get('BLOG_PATH'))
from blog.blog import app, init_db
You can see the full details here: https://circleci.com/gh/levlaz/blog My biggest issue with installing the app in a traditional sense is that when I run it with apache mod_wsgi it does not seem to actually copy over the right folders and apache is not able to find templates or static files. So that sucks, and I am probably doing something wrong. But this approach works more or less no matter what so sometimes a hack is better than derping around with no solution (as I did for six hours yesterday).

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Un momento en Mazamitla

La semana pasada tuve un tiempo de desconexión en Mazamitla, un bosque con cabañas, naturaleza y paz.

via Martin Morales January 31, 2026

Sketches

I've been sticking to a sketching routine recently: every day I draw at least once face.Faces are different for me than any other kind of drawing. Somewhere in the process the face looks real enough for me to recognize it as a human being, if it's…

via macwright.com January 31, 2026

Pi: The Minimal Agent Within OpenClaw

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you will have noticed this week that a project of my friend Peter went viral on the internet. It went by many names. The most recent one is OpenClaw but in the news you might have encountered it as ClawdBot or MoltBot…

via Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings January 31, 2026

Generated by openring