[FIXED] Mocking signals function in unit test

Issue

I'm using Django version 4.2.6.

I have a file, signals.py, that includes a pre-save handler for my entity:

def do_stuff(sender, instance, **kwargs):
    ... stuff...

pre_save.connect(do_stuff, sender=MyEntity)

... so that when an instance of MyEntity is either created or updated, the do_stuff() function is executed.

How do I mock do_stuff() in unit tests? I have a number of tests that create and update MyEntity instances, so do_stuff() is being called during the execution of the unit test. My implementation of do_stuff() is making a call to an external source amongst other functionality, so I want to mock it when the unit test runs.

I have tried declaring the following a part of my unit test:

@mock.patch("application.package.signals.do_stuff", autospec=True,)

... but when I execute the test, I can see that do_stuff() is still being executed.

Solution

As per bbayles' suggestion above, a solution was implemented where the code to call do_stuff() was only executed when it was deployed into an environment, rather than run locally or via unit tests.

I used os.environ to identify whether this was the case or not.

Answered By - GarlicBread