Add ResolverMatch object to test client responses.

[Tai Lee]

The docs say that you can use the test client to "Test that the correct view is executed for a given URL." but this doesn't seem to be possible without requiring users to perform their own resolve(), when Django has already done it and discarded the resulting ResolverMatch object.

response = client.post(some_url, some_data, follow=True)
self.assertEqual(resolve(response.request["PATH_INFO"]).url_name, 'some_url')

In my case, some_url is a view that processes some form data and redirects according to the data, and I'm testing that with some_data as input, the request is redirected to some_url. With different data, it might redirect to a different URL.

Initially I tried to use assertRedirects and response.redirect_chain to test this, but ran into trouble because I had to try and construct a URL string that would match the redirect_chain from the view function or URL name, without knowing the exact URL arguments that were used to generate the redirect URL (auto field and a hash that is unique to the newly created object).

I'd like to see Django add the ResolverMatch object directly to all test client responses, so that users can easily test that a specific view function or named URL was executed.

I guess this would be implemented similarly to the way the context and templates are added.

I think this is either a feature bug or a documentation bug. If this is not a valid feature of the test client, the docs should be clarified. I read "correct view is executed" to mean "correct view function (or class based view) is executed".

[Aymeric Augustin]

I think you're expected to use assertRedirects. Can't you just recover the auto field and hash values by fetching the last object from the database? If not, that's really an edge case, I'm not sure we want to modify Django for this.

[Tai Lee]

assertRedirects tells me the URLs that were used in a chain of redirects. It does not tell me the view (function or named URL) that was executed for a given request. Unless I'm reading the docs wrong (in which case this should be a doc fix), one of the goals of the test client is to allow users to verify the view that was executed for a given request.

What I want to test is, what view function or named URL was executed to generate the response for a given request. Not was an object created in the database (and it may not always be), then perform a redundant URL lookup (Django already did it when processing the request) so I can finally test if the correct view function or named URL was executed.

It would be a lot easier to write and read tests (and DRY) to simply POST your data to a URL, and verify the view function or named URL that generated the response. Django works some magic to make available a list of templatest that were used, the context, etc. Why not make the ResolverMatch object available, too?

I had a +1 on making this possible from cramm on IRC. I'm happy to take a crack at implementing this functionality OR writing a doc patch if that ends up being the decision. I just don't want to work on a fix if the core devs don't want it.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Since we have a +1 from a core developer, I'm going to accept the ticket. If you want to discuss the idea further before implementing it, you can send an email to django-developers.

[Jacob]

Milestone 1.4 deleted

[Aymeric Augustin]

Change UI/UX from NULL to False.

[Aymeric Augustin]

#15695 is related.

[Tai Lee]

Closing this as fixed. Since #15695 was fixed, the resolver match object is added to all requests (not only test client requests).

[Tai Lee]

Sorry, it must be too early in the morning. Got my requests and responses mixed up!

[Greg Chapple]

Created PR for this issue: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/2768

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In bf743a4d571bbb7da276bc21c61f6ada5d26942c:

Fixed #16087 -- Added ResolverMatch instance to test client response.

Thanks mrmachine for the suggestion.