[Answered ]-During django unittests, database remains empty

Subclass your tests from TransactionTestCase instead of TestCase, and then the data will be saved/committed as expected, so you can then examine the data in the database directly.

Per the docs:

Django’s TestCase class is a more commonly used subclass of
TransactionTestCase that makes use of database transaction
facilities to speed up the process of resetting the database to a
known state at the beginning of each test. A consequence of this,
however, is that some database behaviors cannot be tested within a
Django TestCase class. For instance, you cannot test that a block of
code is executing within a transaction, as is required when using
select_for_update(). In those cases, you should use
TransactionTestCase.

TransactionTestCase and TestCase are identical except for the manner
in which the database is reset to a known state and the ability for
test code to test the effects of commit and rollback:

• A TransactionTestCase resets the database after the test runs by
  truncating all tables. A TransactionTestCase may call commit and
  rollback and observe the effects of these calls on the database.
• A TestCase, on the other hand, does not truncate tables after a test.
  Instead, it encloses the test code in a database transaction that is
  rolled back at the end of the test. This guarantees that the rollback
  at the end of the test restores the database to its initial state.