Django forms which needs the request , makes testing harder? - django

Question

I have many django forms in which I pass the request as kwarg.
I've just started dive into testing, and it seems that testing forms which require the request as argument makes the testing harder. As I have to somehow create a request and I cant test my forms without it.
So is it best to avoid passing the request to the form at all? Or another workaround?
The reason I do that on first place is that sometimes I need request.user, or request.session and do some cleaning/setting based on that info in the form.
UPDATE:
This is an example form:
class OrderForm(forms.ModelForm):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.request = kwargs.pop('request')
self.user = self.request.user
def clean(self):
# Here I have some cross session-field validation
if self.request.session['has_response'] and self.cleaned_data('status') == 'NEW':
raise ValidationError()
def save(self, commit=False):
self.instance.user = self.user
return super(OrderForm, self).save(commit=True)
class Meta:
model = Order
fields = ('address', 'city', 'status', ) # more fields
The view code is simple:
form = OrderForm(request.POST, request=request)
The Order model also have a clean() method with some validation logic.
The session is populated at most during the user login.
The point it I need the session/user there.
But most important, the question - is it a bad design to pass the request and session to the form, considering options for testing this form? I find it more logical when the form take care for saving the object, including the request.user. But maybe I should try to split that between the form and view?

Answer 1

Passing request to the form is okay if you need it in the clean() method. You can use a request/session/user in a test like this:
from django.test import TestCase, Client
from django.test.client import RequestFactory
from django.contrib.auth.models import AnonymousUser, User
from .views import my_view
from .forms import MyForm
from django.contrib.sessions.middleware import SessionMiddleware
# If Python >= 3.4
from unittest.mock import patch, MagicMock
# Else
from mock import patch, MagicMock
class SimpleTest(TestCase):
def setUp(self):
# Create a RequestFactory accessible by the entire class.
self.factory = RequestFactory()
# Create a new user object accessible by the entire class.
self.user = User.objects.create_user(username='username',
email='email', password='password')
def test_my_view(self):
# Create an instance of a GET request.
request = self.factory.get('/my-url/')
# Middleware is not supported so simulate a
# logged-in user by setting request.user.
request.user = self.user
# Or add anonymous user to request.
request.user = AnonymousUser()
# Test view() at '/my-url/'
response = my_view(request)
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
#patch('app.models.ModelName.save', MagicMock(name="save"))
def test_my_form_view_with_factory(self):
# Set up form data.
form_data = {'something': 'something'}
# Create an instance of a POST request.
request = self.factory.post('/my-form-url/', form_data)
# Simulate logged-in user
request.user = self.user
# Setup session.
middleware = SessionMiddleware()
middleware.process_request(request)
request.session.save()
# Or you should just be able to do
request.session['somekey'] = 'test'
request.session.save()
# Get response from form view, and test passing
# request/data to form.
form = MyForm(request=request, data=form_data)
response = my_form_view(request)
self.assertTrue(form.is_valid())
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
# If model form you can do
self.assertTrue(ModelName.save.called)
#patch('app.models.ModelName.save', MagicMock(name="save"))
def test_my_form_view_with_client(self):
# Use Client instead of RequestFactory.
self.client = Client()
# Login with Client.
self.client.login(username='username', password='password')
# Set up form data.
form_data = {'something': 'something'}
# Get/set session.
session = self.client.session
session['somekey'] = 'test'
session.save()
# Get response with Client.
response = self.client.post('/my-form-url/', form_data)
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
# If model form you can do
self.assertTrue(ModelName.save.called)
Should give a general idea of what you can do, not specifically tested.