How to test custom django-admin commands

You should make your actual command script the minimum possible, so that it just calls a function elsewhere. The function can then be tested via unit tests or doctests as normal.

If you're using some coverage tool it would be good to call it from the code with:

from django.core.management import call_command
from django.test import TestCase

class CommandsTestCase(TestCase):
    def test_mycommand(self):
        " Test my custom command."

        args = []
        opts = {}
        call_command('mycommand', *args, **opts)

        # Some Asserts.

From the official documentation

Management commands can be tested with the call_command() function. The output can be redirected into a StringIO instance