avoid creating a new app context when using json argument in test client

[mbarakaja]

At this moment, when a Flask test client method uses the json argument, a new application context is created in the line below.

flask/flask/testing.py

Line 82 in b9b88b0

with app.app_context():

The problem is that when the above created context goes out of scope, anything registered to teardown_appcontext is called. This is the case of Flask-SQLAlchemy, which remove the current session when that happens.

This is problematic is some tests scenarios.

I am using PostgreSQL SAVEPOINT to rollback any changes made by a test case. My approach is similar to this example provided by SQLAlchemy here, so I'm not going to put all my code here, just a shallow example.

I have a class that creates a nested transaction and rollback everything when needed.

client = app.test_client()
trn = TransactionManager(database)

with app.app_context():
    trn.start() # start a new nested transaction

    client.post('/products', data=json.dumps({'name': 'Cake'}))
    client.get('/products')
    
    trn.end() # Rollback before the session is removed.

The above works well because everything happens inside the same transaction and each test client interaction can see changes made to the database by previous client calls.

But using the json argument, the POST call will first create an application context, which immediately will go out of scope making Flask-SQLAlchemy's teardown_appcontext registered function remove the current session before the next client call, making each database interaction in a different transaction.

Why do we need an application context to dump the JSON string?

flask/flask/testing.py

Line 83 in b9b88b0

kwargs['data'] = json_dumps(kwargs.pop('json'))

I don't understand, but if the the above logic is necessary I think the code should check first if there is an application context pushed already using has_app_context.

Am I doing something wrong or I am missing something?

[kumy]

Hi, I passed hours trying to find why my blended objects were detached from the session just after using get() function. I finally reached to the same problematic line. Removing the context creation or replacing it with test_request_context fixed my problem.

What do Flask gurus think about the current implementation?

flask/flask/testing.py

Lines 81 to 86 in c92001d

	# push a context so flask.json can use app's json attributes
	with app.app_context():
	kwargs['data'] = json_dumps(kwargs.pop('json'))
	if 'content_type' not in kwargs:
	kwargs['content_type'] = 'application/json'

[garenchan]

I think this may be better than using test_request_context:

from flask import current_app

try:
    push_ctx = current_app is not app
    if push_ctx:
        ctx = app.app_context()
        ctx.push()

    kwargs['data'] = json_dumps(kwargs.pop('json'))
finally:
    if push_ctx:
        ctx.pop()

[mbarakaja]

@kumy Did you test your code?.

The Flask test client and test_request_context use make_test_environ_builder under the hood. So, probably your code is going to end up in a recursive call.

[kumy]

@mbarakaja Yes, it is currently deployed in my dev environment and it works.
I also just tested code from @garenchan and it's also working in my use case.

[soundstripe]

I’m in the exact same situation. The double app context teardown is making it difficult to roll back sessions in test environments. Once for jsonify and once again for the actual request.