How to test/simulate broken database connection

Question

I have written logic to return custom errors when my application cannot connect to the database (why that can happen is out of the scope for this question). I wish to write unit tests for this, specifically to see the response status codes when:

1. there is a valid connection to the database. This is easy as Django automatically creates a "test" database whenever I run any tests.
2. there isn't a valid connection to the database. Unfortunately, I cannot find any documentation about this.

Is it possible to run that test by somehow simulating that something has gone wrong with the database connection?

Answer 1

Rather than simulating a failed connection, you could simply raise your custom error during the test.

raise customConnectionError('oops')

Another possibility is using the destroy_test_db method from django.db.connection.creation to close the connection to your database.

from django.db.connection.creation import destroy_test_db


destroy_test_db('your_database_name', keepdb=True)

For more information please consult Django Docs: destroy_test_db.