Access session object during unittest

[thadeusb]

Can we get the docs updated to include an example to access session object while unit testing.

Here is a potential solution, using unittest for flaskr

def test_session(self):
    with flaskr.app.test_request_context('/login', method='POST', data=dict(
                    username=flaskr.USERNAME, password=flaskr.PASSWORD,)):
        rv = flaskr.app.dispatch_request()
        assert flaskr.session['logged_in'] == True

    with flaskr.app.test_request_context('/login', method='POST', data=dict(
                    username=flaskr.USERNAME+'x', password=flaskr.PASSWORD+'x',)):
        rv = flaskr.app.dispatch_request()
        assert not flaskr.session.get('logged_in')

[mitsuhiko]

I do not recommend triggering the request handling like this. The nicer solution is the test_client like the example tests do: http://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/blob/master/examples/minitwit/minitwit_tests.py

The big advantage is that it does not depend on a certain way to dispatch requests and tests will continue to work if one refactors the request dispatching.

[cgrinds]

I assume that using test_client there is no way to access the session since test_client treats the app as a black box. That was what thadeusb was trying to do.

[mitsuhiko]

That is indeed the case but you can hook in a temporary view so that you can access the session from there (for example). There are other ways as well but I'm not sure if its not a better idea to test the application as blackbox in general.

[thadeusb]

I figured the purpose of unittesting was to make sure your application was working properly.

What if I store a fairly large object in session (say I am making a ampache clone) and I store the playlist. I need to verify that that playlist is correct in the session object, I can't even look at it correctly from an html stand point.

There is another issue with black-box testing, what if I change the way my flash messsage is worded? Well now all my tests are broken, even though my application works just fine and dandy.

[mitsuhiko]

Added example for context bound objects to the testing docs. This closed by 8d49440