Test client flatens POST data

[emdonahu@…]

Under normal production conditions, request.POST returns a QueryDict corresponding to the query parameters, like so:

<QueryDict: {u'my_key': [u'my_value']}>

However, when running a post request from the test client via

python manage.py test

the post data gets flattened into a single string that is unparsable by the QueryDict, resulting in this:

<QueryDict: {u"{'my_key': ['my_value']}": [u'']}> #the whole parameter dictionary is flattened into a string

Currently, the data dict is serialized by the smart_str function, which only seems to be intended for encoding strings. The result is an encoded but unformatted serialized post_data string that eventually reaches the QueryDict constructor, but does not present a format that QueryDict respects. If this not in fact the intended behavior, the most straight-forward fix would seem to be urlencoding the data dict prior to serialization. A patch representative of this suggestion is attached. For further presentation of the issue, refer to ​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6315960/djangos-querydict-bizarre-behavior-bunches-post-dictionary-into-a-single-key.

[Stephen Burrows]

See my answer on stackoverflow - this is a usage issue, not a problem with django.