How do I prevent fixtures from conflicting with django post_save signal code?

I think I figured out a way to do this. There is a 'raw' parameter in the kwargs passed in along with signals so I can replace my test above with this one:

if (kwargs.get('created', True) and not kwargs.get('raw', False)):

Raw is used when loaddata is running. This seems to do the trick.

It is mentioned here: http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/13299

Would be nice if this was documented: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/ref/signals/#django.db.models.signals.post_save

This is an old question, but the solution I've found most straightforward is to use the 'raw' argument, passed by load data, and decorate the listener functions, for example:

from functools import wraps


def disable_for_loaddata(signal_handler):
    @wraps(signal_handler)
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        if kwargs['raw']:
            print "Skipping signal for %s %s" % (args, kwargs)
            return
        signal_handler(*args, **kwargs)
    return wrapper

and then

@disable_for_loaddata
def callback_create_profile(sender, **kwargs):
    # check if we are creating a new User
    ...

Simple solution, add this to the beginning of your post_save function:

if kwargs.get('raw', False):
    return False

This will cause this function to exit when loading a fixture.

See: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/signals/#post-save

I faced a similar problem in one of my projects. In my case the signals were slowing down the tests as well. I ended up abandoning signals in favour of overriding a Model.save() method instead.

In your case however I don't think it makes sense to achieve this by overriding any save() methods. In that case you might want to try this. Warning, I only tried it once. It seemed to work but is not thoroughly tested.

1. Create your own test runner.
2. Before you load the fixtures, disconnect the callback_create_profile function from the User class' post_save signal.
3. Let the fixtures load.
4. Connect the function back to the signal.