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.

Deeper dive: Were Touch Bar’s problems software rather than hardware? from Unsung
Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
The default person from https://popagandhi.com/
No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Don’t Let Anyone Take Away Your Big Box of Cables

Speaking of being on the internet and finding things that make you go, “Hey! It’s not just me!” I scrolled across this skeet from Tyler Gaw: I just dug to the bottom of my Big Box of Cables to find two cables that I needed for something. They've been in th...

via Jim Nielsen’s Blog September 9, 2026

Do We Have to Choose Between Rails and Trails?

A Bike-Riding Railfan on the Pros and Cons of "Railbanking"

via High Speed September 9, 2026

Greyscale in Doodle Scan

I added a greyscale colour mode to Doodle Scan

via Robb Knight • Posts • Atom Feed September 9, 2026

Generated by openring