IntegrityError on contentype creation when using transactional test with AND without serialized_rollback

[Julie Rymer]

Related to #23727

When using TransactionTestCase, if you use rollback emulation with serialized_rollback=True for some test but not all, you'll get a db error because of a duplicate on ContentType.

django.db.utils.IntegrityError: UNIQUE constraint failed: django_content_type.app_label, django_content_type.model

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "[...]/site-packages/django/db/backends/base/creation.py", line 163, in deserialize_db_from_string
    obj.save()

Problem analysis

When using serialized_rollback=True, on test setup the content of the database that was previously serialised will be applied.
On teardown, the data will be flushed and the post_migrate signal won't be emitted because of inhibit_post_migrate argument.

When using serialized_rollback=False no database content is loaded on setup and on teardown the database is flushed and post_migrate signal will be emitted.

ContentType objects get created from a post_migrate handler. They also get serialised from database content.

So, what happens if a test with serialized_rollback=True get run after a test with serialized_rollback=False? You get an IntegrityError because the ContentType object are loaded from connection._test_serialized_contents after they already were created from the post_migrate handler emitted when flushing.

I think this is what is happening, please correct me if my assumptions are wrong.

How to reproduce

Using the "Writing your first Django app" tutorial, you can reproduce by adding the following tests to the polls app:

from django.test import TransactionTestCase

class QuestionModel1Tests(TransactionTestCase):
    serialized_rollback = False
    def test_was_published_recently_with_future_question(self):
        self.assertTrue(True)


class QuestionModel2Tests(TransactionTestCase):
    serialized_rollback = True
    def test_was_published_recently_with_future_question(self):
        self.assertTrue(True)

This error fully depends on the order of the test execution. If you don't get the error the first time, just add some more tests alternating serialized_rollback True and False until you get the error. you'll get it as soon as a serialised rollback test execute after a non-serialised one.

[Sarah Boyce]

Thank you, replicated. Also see this behavior on 5.1, 5.0, 4.2

[Julie Rymer]

Also for those affected, I found a workaround I'm using with pytest.
You can use the pytest_collection_modifyitems hook to change the order of the tests and have all transactional tests with serialized_rollback=False all run at the end. This way the post_migrate won't affect any test with serialized_rollback=True.

def pytest_collection_modifyitems(config, items):
    def transactional_attr_order(item):
        marker = item.get_closest_marker("django_db")
        if (
            marker
            and marker.kwargs.get("transaction", False)
            and not marker.kwargs.get("serialized_rollback", False)
        ):
            return 1
        return 0

    items.sort(key=transactional_attr_order)

[Simon Charette]

A similar re-ordering strategy could be employed in this case. Something like

django/test/runner.py

@@ -21 +21 @@
 import django
 from django.core.management import call_command
 from django.db import connections
-from django.test import SimpleTestCase, TestCase
+from django.test import SimpleTestCase, TestCase, TransactionTestCase
 from django.test.utils import NullTimeKeeper, TimeKeeper, iter_test_cases
 from django.test.utils import setup_databases as _setup_databases
 from django.test.utils import setup_test_environment
@@ -656 +656 @@
         return [hashes[hashed] for hashed in sorted(hashes)]
 
 
+class _SerializedRollbackTransactionTestCaseType(type):
+    def __instancecheck__(self, instance):
+        return (
+            isinstance(instance, TransactionTestCase) and instance.serialized_rollback
+        )
+
+
+class _SerializedRollbackTransactionTestCase(
+    metaclass=_SerializedRollbackTransactionTestCaseType
+):
+    pass
+
+
 class DiscoverRunner:
     """A Django test runner that uses unittest2 test discovery."""
 
@@ -663 +676 @@
     parallel_test_suite = ParallelTestSuite
     test_runner = unittest.TextTestRunner
     test_loader = unittest.defaultTestLoader
-    reorder_by = (TestCase, SimpleTestCase)
+    reorder_by = (TestCase, _SerializedRollbackTransactionTestCase, SimpleTestCase)
 
     def __init__(
         self,