Using the Test Mode Configuration

Airflow has a fixed set of “test mode” configuration options. You can load these at any time by calling airflow.configuration.load_test_config(). Please note that this operation is not reversible.

Some options for example, DAG_FOLDER, are loaded before you have a chance to call load_test_config(). In order to eagerly load the test configuration, set test_mode in airflow.cfg:

[tests]
unit_test_mode = True

Due to Airflow’s automatic environment variable expansion (see Setting Configuration Options), you can also set the environment variable AIRFLOW__CORE__UNIT_TEST_MODE to temporarily overwrite airflow.cfg.