python web py automated testing - python-2.7

Question

I am having an issue with automated testing in web py framework.
I am going through the last exercise of learn python the hard way. In this exercise we make a web application "engine" that runs a map of rooms.
I want to be able to automate test every single room, but there is one problem, is that the engine depends on the previous room to decide which room to go to next (and user input).
if web.config.get("_session") is None:
store = web.session.DiskStore("sessions")
session = web.session.Session(app, store, initializer={"room":None})
web.config._session = session
else:
session = web.config._session
This class handles GET request sent to /
class Index(object):
def GET(self):
session.room = map.START
web.seeother("/game")
This class handles GET and POST requests to /game
class GameEngine(object):
def GET(self):
if session.room:
return render.show_room(room=session.room)
else:
return render.you_died()
def POST(self):
form = web.input(action=None)
if session.room and form.action:
session.room = session.room.go(form.action)
web.seeother("/game")
In my automated testing I use two things: first I use the app.request API:
app.request(localpart='/', method='GET',data=None,
host='0.0.0.0:8080', headers=None, https=False)
create a response object, something like:
resp = app.request("/game", method = "GET")
Second I pass the resp object to this function to check for certain things:
from nose.tools import *
import re
def assert_response(resp, contains=None, matches=None, headers=None,
status="200"):
assert status in resp.status, "Expected response %r not in %r" %
(status, resp.status)
if status == "200":
assert resp.data, "Response data is empty"
if contains:
assert contains in resp.data, "Response does not contain %r" %
contains
if matches:
reg = re.compile(matches)
assert reg.matces(resp.data), "Response does not match %r" %
matches
if headers:
assert_equal(resp.headers, headers)
We can pass variables as a dictionary to the keyword argument data in the API app.request to modify the web.input().
my question is: in my automated test module how do we "pass" a value that overwrite the room value in the initializer dictionary in our session:
session = web.session.Session(app, store, initializer={"room":None})
In the app module its done by setting
session.room = map.START
and then session.room updates using:
if session.room and form.action:
session.room = session.room.go(form.action)
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and any insights would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Alright I finally found it! The main issue here was that every time I make a http request through app.request it gives me a new session ID.
The trick that I found thanks to this post:
How to initialize session data in automated test? (python 2.7, webpy, nosetests)
is to record the session ID of the request to reuse that ID in my automated tests by passing it to the headers keyword argument in the request!
record the session ID using this function (which I placed as suggested in the post in tests/tools.py):
def get_session_id(resp):
cookies_str = resp.headers['Set-Cookie']
if cookies_str:
for kv in cookies_str.split(';'):
if 'webpy_session_id=' in kv:
return kv
then in the automated tests something like:
def test_session():
resp = app.request('/')
session_id = get_session_id(resp)
resp1 = app.request('/game', headers={'Cookie':session_id})
assert_response(resp1, status='200', contains='Central Corridor')
I hope that helps in the future for programmers who get stuck on the same issue!