Error with Django assertJSONEqual when unit testing view - django

Question

Similar to this question, I'm having problems testing a view with Django's unit testing framework. My view is very simple: it processes a form, adds an object to the database, and returns a JSONResponse. The test is equally simple, but I keep getting "First argument is not valid JSON: ''. The code actually works in my application; it just doesn't seem to work when unit testing. Any help is appreciated.
EDIT:
Traceback
======================================================================
ERROR: tearDownClass (zoning_intake.tests.AddActionTypeTest)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Virtual\Django18\lib\site-packages\django\test\testcases.py", line 96
2, in tearDownClass
cls._rollback_atomics(cls.cls_atomics)
AttributeError: type object 'AddActionTypeTest' has no attribute 'cls_atomics'
======================================================================
FAIL: test_post_add_action_type_succeeds (zoning_intake.tests.AddActionTypeTest)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Hg\sdcgis\zoning_intake\tests.py", line 26, in test_post_add_action_t
ype_succeeds
self.assertJSONEqual(response.content,{'result':'Success', 'msg':'Success'})
File "C:\Virtual\Django18\lib\site-packages\django\test\testcases.py", line 68
9, in assertJSONEqual
self.fail("First argument is not valid JSON: %r" % raw)
AssertionError: First argument is not valid JSON: ''
Ran 1 test in 10.757s
FAILED (failures=1, errors=1)
Preserving test database for alias 'default'...
Preserving test database for alias 'other'...
My view:
form = ActionTypeForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
action = form.cleaned_data['action']
new_type = CaseRequestActionType(action=action)
new_type.save()
return JsonResponse({'result':'Success', 'msg':'Success'})
else:
return JsonResponse({'result':'Fail', 'msg':'An unknown error occurred'})
My test:
class AddActionTypeTest(TestCase):
if django.VERSION[:2] >= (1, 7):
# Django 1.7 requires an explicit setup() when running tests in PTVS
#classmethod
def setUpClass(cls):
django.setup()
def test_post_add_action_type_fails(self):
response = self.client.post(reverse('zoning:add_action_type'))
self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 302)
self.assertJSONEqual(force_text(response.content), {'result':'Fail', 'msg':'An unknown error occurred'})

Answer 1

So it turns out that the issue is very simple, and the 302 status code is the key to understanding why I had this issue. I have the #login_required decorator on my view, so when I ran the test WITHOUT having logged in a user, I'm redirected to my login view. Since the login view returns html, not JSON, my response is not valid JSON, and the status code returns 302 instead of the expected 200. I needed to override the setUp method to create a user in the database and then call login in the test itself in order for my test to work properly and my status code to return 200. Thanks to #Shang Wang for assistance
Complete View:
#login_required
def add_action_type(request):
if request.method == 'GET':
...
else:
form = ActionTypeForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
action = form.cleaned_data['action']
new_type = CaseRequestActionType(action=action)
new_type.save()
return JsonResponse({'result':'Success', 'msg':'Success'})
else:
return JsonResponse({'result':'Fail', 'msg':'An unknown error occurred'})
Updated test:
class AddActionTypeTest(TestCase):
#classmethod
def setUp(self):
self.user = User.objects.create_user(username='shawn', email='shawn#...com', password='top_secret')
def test_post_add_action_type_fails(self):
self.client.login(username=self.user.username, password='top_secret')
response = self.client.post(reverse('zoning:add_action_type'))
self.assertJSONEqual(force_text(response.content), {'result':'Fail', 'msg':'An unknown error occurred'})