How to disable/mock rate limiting in pytest tests?

[IanQS]

What's the recommended way to disable/mock rate limiting in pytest tests while keeping the decorators in production code?

[ismaildasci]

a few approaches that work well:

1. simplest - disable the limiter in test config:

from slowapi import _rate_limit_exceeded_handler
from slowapi.errors import RateLimitExceeded

limiter.enabled = False # add this in your conftest.py or test setup

2. use a fixture to toggle it:

import pytest
from your_app import limiter

@pytest.fixture(autouse=True)
def disable_rate_limit():
limiter.enabled = False
yield
limiter.enabled = True

3. if you want to actually test the rate limiting works, mock the storage backend:

@pytest.fixture
def rate_limit_storage():
from slowapi.util import get_ipaddr
# use memory storage so it resets between tests
limiter._storage = MemoryStorage()
yield
limiter.reset()

4. or override the limiter dependency in your test client:

from unittest.mock import MagicMock

def test_something(client):
with patch.object(limiter, "_check_request_limit", return_value=None):
response = client.get("/some-endpoint")

the limiter.enabled = False approach is cleanest for most cases. just make sure to set it back in teardown if running tests in parallel.