Why don't my Django unittests know that MessageMiddleware is installed?

Question

I\'m working on a Django project and am writing unittests for it. However, in a test, when I try and log a user in, I get this error:

MessageFailure: You can         


        

Answer 1

This builds on Tarsis Azevedo's answer by creating a MessagingRequest helper class below.

Given say a KittenAdmin I'd want to get 100% test coverage for:

from django.contrib import admin, messages

class KittenAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    def warm_fuzzy_method(self, request):
        messages.warning(request, 'Can I haz cheezburger?')

I created a MessagingRequest helper class to use in say a test_helpers.py file:

from django.contrib.messages.storage.fallback import FallbackStorage
from django.http import HttpRequest

class MessagingRequest(HttpRequest):
    session = 'session'

    def __init__(self):
        super(MessagingRequest, self).__init__()
        self._messages = FallbackStorage(self)

    def get_messages(self):
        return getattr(self._messages, '_queued_messages')

    def get_message_strings(self):
        return [str(m) for m in self.get_messages()]

Then in a standard Django tests.py:

from django.contrib.admin.sites import AdminSite
from django.test import TestCase

from cats.kitten.admin import KittenAdmin
from cats.kitten.models import Kitten
from cats.kitten.test_helpers import MessagingRequest

class KittenAdminTest(TestCase):
    def test_kitten_admin_message(self):
        admin = KittenAdmin(model=Kitten, admin_site=AdminSite())
        expect = ['Can I haz cheezburger?']
        request = MessagingRequest()
        admin.warm_fuzzy_method(request)
        self.assertEqual(request.get_message_strings(), expect)

Results:

coverage run --include='cats/kitten/*' manage.py test; coverage report -m
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.001s

OK
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...
Name                                     Stmts   Miss  Cover   Missing
----------------------------------------------------------------------
cats/kitten/__init__.py                      0      0   100%   
cats/kitten/admin.py                         4      0   100%   
cats/kitten/migrations/0001_initial.py       5      0   100%   
cats/kitten/migrations/__init__.py           0      0   100%   
cats/kitten/models.py                        3      0   100%   
cats/kitten/test_helpers.py                 11      0   100%   
cats/kitten/tests.py                        12      0   100%   
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL                                       35      0   100%