self.client.get(): system tests for the unaware

Here are some reasons why Django's builtin client performs system tests:

• it resolves URLs,
• it traverses middlewares,
• it traverses decorators,
• it uses template context processors,
• it relies on settings,
• ... and perhaps more. Who knows? Do you really want to know?

All the stuff above is not the view, it is the environment surrounding the view.

It means that, by using the test client, you don't test the view itself, but the system the view is part of. And the environment is quite hard (and boring) to control.

Here, we want to focus on the view, so let's emancipate from all those third party mechanisms.

Testing view functions

Let's consider this simple view:

from django.http import Http404, HttpResponse

def hello(request, name):
    if name == u'Waldo'
        raise Http404("Where's Waldo?")
    return HttpResponse(u'Hello {name}!'.format(name=name))

Then test it:

import unittest

class HelloTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_get(self):
        """hello view actually tells 'Hello'."""
        # Setup.
        request = 'fake request'
        name = 'world'
        # Run.
        response = hello(request, name)
        # Check.
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertEqual(response.content, u'Hello world!')

    def test_waldo(self):
        """Cannot find Waldo to tell him 'Hello'."""
        # Setup.
        request = 'fake request'
        name = 'Waldo'
        # Run and check.
        self.assertRaises(Http404, hello, request, name)

Pretty simple isn't it?

Really, you don't need Django's builtin test client to write such tests!

Use unittest or SimpleTestCase wherever you can

In the example above, we didn't hit the database, so there were no reasons to use django.test.TransactionTestCase [1] or derivatives.

With such a configuration, tests run really fast!

Wherever you can, use unittest, or django.test.SimpleTestCase [2].

Don't decorate views in place

The "hello" example above would have been broken if the view were decorated in place. As an example:

from django.http import Http404, HttpResponse
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required

@login_required
def hello(request, name):
    if name == u'Waldo'
        raise Http404("Where's Waldo?")
    return HttpResponse(u'Hello {name}!'.format(name=name))

How can we test hello() view now?

We would have to perform (mock) a login, and we would have to check the response with or without authentication. As a consequence, our tests would become longer, less readable, less efficient... Moreover, what if the login decorator has bugs or changes? It would break hello's tests even if hello itself doesn't change. How bad!

So, don't decorate views in place.

Instead:

• decorate views somewhere related to URLconfs (urls.py), not related to views.
• have specific tests for decorators, i.e. validate login_required works.
• have specific tests for URLconfs, i.e. validate login_required is applied to hello in project's configuration (this is a system test).

Use request factories

Django's builtin test client is a special kind of request factory [3], which uses URL resolution to trigger the views (deep inside the system). Now we have isolated views from system. But a view still takes a request as argument. How to get a request?

In the function-based example above, we used a completely fake request. But sometimes you can't do that and need a HttpRequest.

Django provides django.test.RequestFactory [4] to mock requests.

With a request factory, you get a request instance you can pass as argument to views' methods such as dispatch().

from django.test import RequestFactory

request_factory = RequestFactory()
request = request_factory.post('/fake-path', data={'name': u'Waldo'})

Testing class-based views

Once we got rid of Django's builtin test client, we can consider views themselves. How do they look like?

Function-based views look like black boxes: things that take a request and return a response. No way to test internals.

With class-based views, we have various methods and attributes. So we can write fine-grained tests!

The idea here is to test every custom method or attribute of the class-based views you write.

Let's consider the following view:

class HelloView(TemplateView):
    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
        kwargs = super(HelloView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
        kwargs.update('name', self.kwargs.get('name'))
        return kwargs

And let's consider we'd like to reproduce this URLconf scenario:

• view: hello = HelloView.as_view(template_name='hello.html')
• URL: url(r'(?P<name>\w+)', hello)

import unittest
from django.test import RequestFactory

class HelloViewTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_get(self):
        """HelloView.get() sets 'name' in response context."""
        # Setup name.
        name = 'peter'
        # Setup request and view.
        request = RequestFactory().get('/fake-path')
        view = HelloView.as_view(template_name='hello.html')
        # Run.
        response = view(request, name=name)
        # Check.
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertEqual(response.template_name[0], 'home.html')
        self.assertEqual(response.context_data['name'], name)

def setup_view(view, request, *args, **kwargs):
    """Mimic as_view() returned callable, but returns view instance.

    args and kwargs are the same you would pass to ``reverse()``

    """
    view.request = request
    view.args = args
    view.kwargs = kwargs
    return view

import unittest
from django.test import RequestFactory

class HelloViewTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_context_data(self):
        """HelloView.get_context_data() sets 'name' in context."""
        # Setup name.
        name = 'django'
        # Setup request and view.
        request = RequestFactory().get('/fake-path')
        view = HelloView(template_name='hello.html')
        view = setup_view(view, request, name=name)
        # Run.
        context = view.get_context_data()
        # Check.
        self.assertEqual(context['name'], name)

request = RequestFactory().get('/fake-path')
view = HelloView.as_view(template_name='hello.html')
response = view(request, name='bob')

request = RequestFactory().get('/fake-path')
view = HelloView(template_name='hello.html')
view = setup_view(view, request, name='bob')
response = view.dispatch(view.request, *view.args, **view.kwargs)

What's next

Since you test your views as isolated items, you have to test everything else:

• middlewares,
• decorators,
• context processors,
• models...

And you can fake/mock many things inside tests of views, so that you don't rely on database, settings, ...

References