testing 'POST' and 'GET' methods in flask - unit-testing

Question

I currently have an app that crudely posts information from a registration page to my admin page. The posted information is in a table. I would like to make a test that actually checks whether any information has been picked from my registration form and posted to the table in my admin page
app.py code
#app.route('/register_user')
def register_user():
return render_template('register_user.html')
#app.route('/manage_admin', methods=['POST', 'GET'])
def manage_admin():
if request.method == 'POST':
manage_admin = request.form
return render_template('manage_admin.html', manage_admin=manage_admin)
register_user.html
<form id="form-login" method="post" action="/manage_admin">
<input type="text" class="input100" name="name" placeholder="fullname">
<br>
<br>
<input type="text" class="input100" name="username" placeholder=" username">
<br>
<br>
<input type="text" class="input100" name="email" placeholder="email">
<br>
<br>
<input type="password" class="input100" name="password" placeholder="password">
<br>
<br>
<br>
<input type="submit" class="login-button" value="Submit">
</form>
manage_admin.html
{% for key, value in manage_admin.items() %}
<th>{{ value }}</th>
{% endfor %}

Answer 1

I'd recommend using something like Selenium to run automated tests. This will let you perform tests against a live instance of your application.
To get started, install Selenium:
pip install selenium
Then, create a script to run your tests, by importing the Selenium Webdriver along with unittest from the Python standard library:
import unittest
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
class TestRegistrationPage(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
def tearDown(self):
self.driver.quit()
def test_form_posts_to_admin_page(self):
self.driver.get('http://localhost:5000/register_user') # Assuming default Flask port
# Retrieve input elements
name_input = self.driver.find_element_by_name('name')
username_input = self.driver.find_element_by_name('username')
email_input = self.driver.find_element_by_name('email')
password_input = self.driver.find_element_by_name('password')
# Populate inputs with dummy text
name_input.send_keys('Alice Cooper')
username_input.send_keys('acoop')
email_input.sendkeys('acoop#schoolsoutforever.com')
password_input.sendkeys('rockonbaby')
# Find submit button and submit form by sending an "Enter" keypress
submit_button = self.driver.find_element_by_class_name('login-button')
submit_button.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)
# Check if redirect worked. If you don't redirect from the form page the just use the driver.get method above with the target url instead
admin_url = self.driver.current_url
self.assertEqual(admin_url, 'http://localhost:5000/manage_admin')
# Get table header elements and extract their text values
table_cells = self.driver.find_elements_by_tag_name('th')
table_contents = []
for cell in table_cells:
table_contents.append(cell.text)
# Check if dummy text made it into the table contents
self.assertIn('Alice Cooper', table_contents)
self.assertIn('acoop', table_contents)
self.assertIn('acoop#schoolsoutforever.com', table_contents)
self.assertIn('rockonbaby', table_contents)
# Tell unit tests to run when you run the script
if __name__ == '__main__':
unittest.main()
If you encounter any issues with the elements not being found, it could be a page load time issue. In this case, you may need to force a wait if rerunning the tests don't work. For info on doing so, see this answer and the Selenium Waits documentation.

Answer 2

Simple solution, if you can parse the html yourself:
app.test_client().post('/manage_admin', data={'name': 'John Doe', 'username': 'jdoe', ...}))
It returns a Response, from which you can get the html, and check the contents however you like. I've used python's built-in parser for example.