How to unit test Django-CMS extensions?

Question

I am trying to get some test coverage for a Django-CMS implementation I\'m working on and I\'m unsure how to unit test plugins/extensions. Has anyone done this before, and if s

Answer 1

Tests as shown by cms/tests/plugins.py is rather integration tests than unit tests, and that's quite heavy-weight and requires a sometimes too large part of the entire system up and running (not neccessary wrong, just impractical when debugging).

DjangoCMS is tightly integrated so what I have here are a few techniques to get 'closer to the metal' rather than a complete solution:

You need an 'Expando' -style fake class:

class Expando(object): # Never use in production!
    def __init__(self, **kw):
        self.__dict__.update(kw)

To instantiate an instance of your plugin class:

from cms.plugin_pool import plugin_pool

# ..in production code: class YourPlugin(CMSPlugin)...

# This ensures that the system is aware of your plugin:
YrPluginCls = plugin_pool.plugins.get('YourPlugin', None)

# ..instantiate:
plugin = YrPluginCls()

Sanity check the plugins .render method:

ctx = plugin.render({}, Expando(attr1='a1', attr2=123), None)

Render with actual template, check output:

res = render_to_response(look.render_template, ctx)
# assert that attr1 exist in res if it should
# ..same for attr2

BeautifulSoup is handy when validating content of small DOM fragments.

Use admin form fields to indirectly check that model attributes behave correctly:

from django.test.client import RequestFactory
from django.contrib.auth.models import AnonymousUser

# ...

request = RequestFactory().get('/')
request.user = AnonymousUser()
a_field = plugin.get_form(request).base_fields['a_field']
a_field.validate('')
# Check that a_field.validate('') raises