Running Flask Tests without installing the app

April 8, 2017 | 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.

The social contract of writing from jola.dev
My Running Tips from Kevin Bell's Blog
tweet from Derek Sivers blog
Rewrote my blog with Zine from Drew DeVault's blog
A eulogy for Vim from Drew DeVault's blog
Pluralistic: AI "journalists" prove that media bosses don't give a shit (11 Mar 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Offline 23 hours a day from Derek Sivers blog
Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Zig's anti-LLM contribution policy

As shared by on Simon Willison’s blog, Zig has an interesting anti-LLM policy for contributions in their code of conduct. Zig values contributors over their contributions. Each contributor represents an investment by the Zig core team - the primary goal of...

via Information Overload June 11, 2026

Stormdancer (Lotus Wars 1)

Author: Jay Kristoff Rating: ★★★★★ Description: Arashitoras are supposed to be extinct. So when Yukiko and her warrior father Masaru are sent to capture one for the Shōgun, they fear that their lives are over – everyone knows what happens to those who fail...

via Home on Søren's Blog June 11, 2026

“This is my favorite news from all of WWDC this week.”

John Gruber on Daring Fireball: Perhaps the worst UI crime in MacOS 26 Tahoe was the inexplicable decision to add inscrutable, distracting icons next to every item in the menu bar. You will recall Jim Nielsen writing about it, rightly describing it as exac...

via Unsung June 11, 2026

Generated by openring