Unable to unittest Django APIviews with TestCase library? - django-views

Question

This is a very project specific question, but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I have a view class that allows users to perform GET and POST requests to the project database. I am able to successfully GET/POST using curl, but when I write my unittests for this, I can't get it to pass the test, and I don't fully understand why.
This command works:
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/list/categories/ -d '{"id":"00001", "name":"some info"}'
view.py:
class CategoryList(APIView):
def get(self, request, format=None):
categories = Category.objects.all()
serializer = CategorySerializer(categories, many=True)
context = {
'categories': categories
}
return render(request, 'myapp/categories.html', context)
def post(self, request, format=None):
print('=======inside post=========')
data = JSONParser().parse(request)
serializer = CategorySerializer(data=data)
if serializer.is_valid():
serializer.save()
return Response(serializer.data, status=status.HTTP_201_CREATED)
return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)
urls.py:
urlpatterns = [
# eg: /list/categories/
url(r'^categories/$', CategoryList.as_view()),
]
Here's where my test fails.
tests.py:
class CategoryViewTests(TestCase):
def setUp(self):
""" Mock model data """
cat1 = Category.objects.create(id=55555, name="Shoes")
cat2 = Category.objects.create(id=12345, name="Wallets")
def test_new_unique_category(self):
"""
Create a new category obj
"""
c = Client()
print(str(Category.objects.all()))
new_cat_data = {'id':'54211', 'name':'Soccer Balls'}
response = c.post('/list/categories', new_cat_data)
print(str(Category.objects.all()))
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 201)
Terminal output:
test_new_unique_category (inferbrand.tests.CategoryViewTests) ...
<QuerySet [<Category: Test Men's Shoes>, <Category: Test Wallets>]>
<QuerySet [<Category: Test Men's Shoes>, <Category: Test Wallets>]>
FAIL
======================================================================
FAIL: test_new_unique_category (inferbrand.tests.CategoryViewTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "path/to/proj/tests.py", line 104, in test_new_unique_category
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 201)
AssertionError: 301 != 201
What am I doing wrong?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The curl command works because you have a trailing slash in the URL, but in your unit test the URL does not have a trailing slash, so Django is redirecting it to a URL with a trailing slash with status code 301, which is the default behavior unless you set APPEND_SLASH to False in settings.py.
Please refer to https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/ref/settings/#append-slash for more details.

Answer 2

Okay. I think the root cause of this is that serializers aren't able to process the incoming request from django unittests correctly. I ended up removing all the serializers, and instead replaced them like so:
class CategoryList(APIView):
def get(self, request, format=None):
categories = Category.objects.all()
context = {
'categories': categories
}
return render(
request,
'myapp/categories.html',
context
)
def post(self, request, format=None):
data = request.POST
new_cat = Category(id=data['id'],
name=data['name'])
new_cat.save()
return HttpResponseRedirect(reverse('myapp:category_detail', args=[ new_cat.id ]))
new curl format:
curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/list/categories/ -d 'id=1299988&name=Tennis123'
The post HttpResponseRedirect still isn't working correctly, (returns status 301), but POST/GET now works using curl and unittesting which was the main issue I was having.