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How to unit test the innards of a Django view function
14th of November 2008
Seconds ago I got this running and haven't yet fully understood what I've just done but the results are exactly what I need and this is going to be great.
Basically, in Django you have views like this:
return render_to_response(template, data,
context_instance=RequestContext(request))
@login_required
def club_page(request, year):
variable1 = year / 4
variable2 = variable1 * 2
return _render("foo.html", locals(), request)
Now in my unit tests I don't want to have to call the view function and then have to dissect the resulting HTML just to figure out if the view function prepared the correct variables. So, here's my solution to this problem:
In 'test_views.py':
# mutable globals for capturing the traffic through _render
snatched_templates = []
snatched_data = []
snatched_requests = []
def _fake_render(template, data, request):
snatched_templates.append(template)
snatched_data.append(data)
snatched_requests.append(request)
return render_to_response(template, data,
context_instance=RequestContext(request))
class FakeRequest(object):
def __init__(self, get=None, post=None, user=None):
self.get = get
self.post = post
self.user = user
def GET(self):
return self.get
def POST(self):
return self.post
class ViewsTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
def test_club_page(self):
# add a test user
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
user = User.objects.create_user(username='t', password='t',
email='t@t.com')
# prepare a request
request = FakeRequest(user=staff)
from my_app import views
views._render = _fake_render
response = club_day_page(request, 'fool', 2004)
assert response.count('</html>')
assert snatched_data[-1]['variable2'] == 102
This isn't really something a novice test driven Django developer can just copy since I've scribbled this code as pseudo code. My code for my app is a bit more complicated than this but the principle is the same.
So, tell me Django gurus, have I reinvented the wheel here or are other people finding this useful?
UPDATE
There is a more convenient way but it's quite arcane. After a client request has been made the response has an attribute context that you can use. E.g.:
context_data = response.context[-1].dicts[0]
pprint(context_data)
This approach, unlike my hack mentioned first, however requires that you have a publishable URL first.
Thanks Stephen!
Comment
Yeah, I moved it last night into a module: http://bitbucket.org/ubernostrum/django-registration-backends/src/tip/registration/tests/views.py
The Django unit-testing documentation covers much easier ways to do this. For real-world examples, see the unit-test suite in the in-progress rewrite of my user-registration app:
http://bitbucket.org/ubernostrum/django-registration-backends/src/tip/registration/tests.py#cl-315
404 on that.