django cookiecutter media/ location for testing

Question

Problem: I have an ImageField in a model. The TestCase isn’t able to find the default image file to perform a image resize on it (a @receiver(pre_save, sender=UserProfile) decorator thing)

class UserProfile(Model):
    user = ForeignKey(AUTH_USER_MODEL ...)
    ...
    photo = ImageField(
        verbose_name=_("Photo"),
        upload_to="media",
        null=True,
        blank=True,
        help_text=_("a photo will spark recognition from others."),
        default="default.png")

Overview: I’m running tests locally from pycharm to a docker container. This project is based on a django cookiecutter project.

I did a search for the target file in the presave hook and the file was found in these 2 directories ['/app/media/default.png', '/opt/project/media/default.png']

I am getting a FileNotFound error on '/app/<my_project_name>/media/default.png'

How do I get the media file to look in these directories?

@receiver(pre_save, sender=UserProfile)
def user_profile_face_photo_reduction(sender, instance, *args, **kwargs):
    """
    This creates the thumbnail photo for a concept
    """

    test_image_size(instance) # this is the function that gives problems.  it's below.
    im = generic_resize_image(size=face_dimensions, image=instance.photo)
    save_images_as_filename(
        filename=Path(instance.photo.path).with_suffix(".png"),
        image=im,
        instance=instance,
    ) 


def test_image_size(instance=None, size_limit=None):
    """
    size_limit is a namedtuple with a height and width that is too large to save.
    instance needs to have a photo attribute to work
    """
    if instance and instance.photo:
        print([x.absolute() for x in sorted(Path("/").rglob("default.png"))]) # this is where I got the actual location info
        assert instance.photo.size <= 10_000_000, ValueError("Image size is too big") # THE PROBLEM LINE IS THIS ONE.
        if (
            instance.photo.width > size_limit.width
            or instance.photo.height > size_limit.height
        ):
            raise ValueError(_("the picture dimensions are too big"))

Answer 1

I started off creating a "media" directory in the app_root folder (/Users//<project_name>/). That was a dumb move. There is already a media folder in the (/Users//<project_name>/<project_name>/media) folder which I didn't see. I tried to force it using tricks like the docker mounting trick and changing my code, it was a waste of time.

I upvoted @heyylateef's answer for the override_settings because that is a neat decorator.