Django: how to count SQL queries from a unit test?

Vinay's response is correct, with one minor addition.

Django's unit test framework actually sets DEBUG to False when it runs, so no matter what you have in settings.py, you will not have anything populated in connection.queries in your unit test unless you re-enable debug mode. The Django docs explain the rationale for this as:

Regardless of the value of the DEBUG setting in your configuration file, all Django tests run with DEBUG=False. This is to ensure that the observed output of your code matches what will be seen in a production setting.

If you're certain that enabling debug will not affect your tests (such as if you're specifically testing DB hits, as it sounds like you are), the solution is to temporarily re-enable debug in your unit test, then set it back afterward:

def test_myself(self):
    from django.conf import settings
    from django.db import connection

    settings.DEBUG = True
    connection.queries = []

    # Test code as normal
    self.assert_(connection.queries)

    settings.DEBUG = False

If you are using pytest, pytest-django has django_assert_num_queries fixture for this purpose:

def test_queries(django_assert_num_queries):
    with django_assert_num_queries(3):
        Item.objects.create('foo')
        Item.objects.create('bar')
        Item.objects.create('baz')

If you don't want use TestCase (with assertNumQueries) or change settings to DEBUG=True, you can use context manager CaptureQueriesContext (same as assertNumQueries using).

from django.db import ConnectionHandler
from django.test.utils import CaptureQueriesContext

DB_NAME = "default"  # name of db configured in settings you want to use - "default" is standard
connection = ConnectionHandler()[DB_NAME]
with CaptureQueriesContext(connection) as context:
    ... # do your thing
num_queries = context.initial_queries - context.final_queries
assert num_queries == expected_num_queries

db settings

In modern Django (>=1.8) it's well documented (it's also documented for 1.7) here, you have the method reset_queries instead of assigning connection.queries=[] which indeed is raising an error, something like that works on django>=1.8:

class QueriesTests(django.test.TestCase):
    def test_queries(self):
        from django.conf import settings
        from django.db import connection, reset_queries

        try:
            settings.DEBUG = True
            # [... your ORM code ...]
            self.assertEquals(len(connection.queries), num_of_expected_queries)
        finally:
            settings.DEBUG = False
            reset_queries()

You may also consider resetting queries on setUp/tearDown to ensure queries are reset for each test instead of doing it on finally clause, but this way is more explicit (although more verbose), or you can use reset_queries in the try clause as many times as you need to evaluate queries counting from 0.

Here is the working prototype of context manager withAssertNumQueriesLessThan

import json
from contextlib import contextmanager
from django.test.utils import CaptureQueriesContext
from django.db import connections

@contextmanager
def withAssertNumQueriesLessThan(self, value, using='default', verbose=False):
    with CaptureQueriesContext(connections[using]) as context:
        yield   # your test will be run here
    if verbose:
        msg = "\r\n%s" % json.dumps(context.captured_queries, indent=4)
    else:
        msg = None
    self.assertLess(len(context.captured_queries), value, msg=msg)

It can be simply used in your unit tests for example for checking the number of queries per Django REST API call

    with self.withAssertNumQueriesLessThan(10):
        response = self.client.get('contacts/')
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)

Also you can provide exact DB using and verbose if you want to pretty-print list of actual queries to stdout

If you have DEBUG set to True in your settings.py (presumably so in your test environment) then you can count queries executed in your test as follows:

from django.db import connection

class DoSomethingTests(django.test.TestCase):
    def test_something_or_other(self):
        num_queries_old = len(connection.queries)
        do_something_in_the_database()
        num_queries_new = len(connection.queries)
        self.assertEqual(n, num_queries_new - num_queries_old)

If you want to use a decorator for that there is a nice gist:

import functools
import sys
import re
from django.conf import settings
from django.db import connection

def shrink_select(sql):
    return re.sub("^SELECT(.+)FROM", "SELECT .. FROM", sql)

def shrink_update(sql):
    return re.sub("SET(.+)WHERE", "SET .. WHERE", sql)

def shrink_insert(sql):
    return re.sub("\((.+)\)", "(..)", sql)

def shrink_sql(sql):
    return shrink_update(shrink_insert(shrink_select(sql)))

def _err_msg(num, expected_num, verbose, func=None):
    func_name = "%s:" % func.__name__ if func else ""
    msg = "%s Expected number of queries is %d, actual number is %d.\n" % (func_name, expected_num, num,)
    if verbose > 0:
        queries = [query['sql'] for query in connection.queries[-num:]]
        if verbose == 1:
            queries = [shrink_sql(sql) for sql in queries]
        msg += "== Queries == \n" +"\n".join(queries)
    return msg


def assertNumQueries(expected_num, verbose=1):

    class DecoratorOrContextManager(object):
        def __call__(self, func):  # decorator
            @functools.wraps(func)
            def inner(*args, **kwargs):
                handled = False
                try:
                    self.__enter__()
                    return func(*args, **kwargs)
                except:
                    self.__exit__(*sys.exc_info())
                    handled = True
                    raise
                finally:
                    if not handled:
                        self.__exit__(None, None, None)
            return inner

        def __enter__(self):
            self.old_debug = settings.DEBUG
            self.old_query_count = len(connection.queries)
            settings.DEBUG = True

        def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
            if not type:
                num = len(connection.queries) - self.old_query_count
                assert expected_num == num, _err_msg(num, expected_num, verbose)
            settings.DEBUG = self.old_debug

    return DecoratorOrContextManager()