[Python] Django does not automatically create test database

I have a Django project, version - 3.2.25. The problem I'm facing is that I'm unable to create a test database, when I'm executing my tests using VScode test runner. If matters here are the pytest versions:

name : pytest
version : 8.2.2
description : pytest: simple powerful testing with Python

required by
- pytest-django requires >=5.4.0
- pytest-dotenv requires >=5.0.0


Basically, I have a test case, which uses my local database, I want to start using a virtual database, which is dynamically created when executing a test, instead of a local one. To do that, I've tried to set a Test property inside my settings.py database configuration:

DATABASES = {
'default': {
"NAME": "localDatabase",
"ENGINE": "django.contrib.gis.db.backends.postgis",
"USER": "test",
"PASSWORD": "test",
"HOST": "127.0.0.1",
"PORT": "5432",
"TEST": {
"NAME": "test_local"
},
},
}


So inside my test case:

class BillAPITests(APITestCase):
def test_create_bill(self):
from django.db import connection
print(connection.settings_dict["NAME"]
response = self.client.post(self.base_url, self.base_payload, format="json")
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, status.HTTP_405_METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED)


the print gives me:

localDatabase
​

instead of "test_local".

As second attempt, I have tried settings up a pytest.fixture inside my conftest.py:

@pytest.fixture(scope="session")
def django_db_setup():
load_dotenv()

settings.DATABASES["default"] = {
"NAME": "test_local",
"ENGINE": "django.contrib.gis.db.backends.postgis",
"USER": "test",
"PASSWORD": "test",
"HOST": "127.0.0.1",
"PORT": "5432",
}

Still the same output...

I have also tried closing all connections in the `django_db_setup` before swapping my default databases using:
```py
from django import db
db.connections.close_all()


No result...

The only thing that gave me different behaviour is settings the database name directly in the django_db_setup, like so:

settings.DATABASES["default"]["NAME"] = "test_local"


However, that way django does not automatically create me "test_local" database and it fails connecting to it.

Any help appreciated, thanks

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