Disable a specific Django middleware during tests

There are several options:

• create a separate test_settings settings file for testing and then run tests via:

  python manage.py test --settings=test_settings 
  

• modify your settings.py on the fly if test is in sys.argv

  if 'test' in sys.argv:
       # modify MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
        MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = list(MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES)
        MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES.remove(<middleware_to_disable>)
  

Hope that helps.

Also related (since this page ranks quite high in search engines for relates queries):

If you'd only like to disable a middleware for a single case, you can also use @modify_settings:

@modify_settings(MIDDLEWARE={
    'remove': 'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
})
def test_my_function(self):
    pass

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/testing/tools/#django.test.override_settings

from django.test import TestCase, override_settings
from django.conf import settings

class MyTestCase(TestCase):

    @override_settings(
        MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES=[mc for mc in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES
                            if mc != 'myapp.middleware.MyMiddleware']
    )
    def test_my_function(self):
        pass