Welcome to the second lesson of our course on testing in Django REST Framework. In this lesson, we'll focus on an essential aspect of testing — mocking the database using fixtures. When testing, it's crucial to isolate the database to ensure that tests are repeatable and consistent. Fixtures allow us to load predefined data into the database, making it easy to test various scenarios without manually setting up data each time. By the end of this lesson, you'll understand how to create and use fixtures in your Django test cases. We’ll also introduce how to export your database state into a fixture file.

Before we dive into fixtures, let's quickly recap the core setup for our TODO application from the previous course.

We created a Django app named myapp and defined a Todo model. Here’s a brief code snippet to refresh your memory:

This sets the stage for our lesson on using fixtures for testing.

Fixtures in Django are a way to load a predefined data set into the database. They are especially helpful in testing because they ensure that each test runs with the same data set, providing consistency and reliability.

Why use fixtures?

• Consistency: Ensures the same data set is used across different test runs.
• Isolation: Helps to isolate the database for unit tests.