Django's self.client.login(…) does not work in unit tests

89
votes

I have created users for my unit tests in two ways:

1) Create a fixture for "auth.user" that looks roughly like this: 

    { 
        "pk": 1, 
        "model": "auth.user", 
        "fields": { 
            "username": "homer", 
            "is_active": 1, 
            "password": 
"sha1$72cd3$4935449e2cd7efb8b3723fb9958fe3bb100a30f2", 
            ... 
        } 
    }

I've left out the seemingly unimportant parts.

2) Use 'create_user' in the setUp function (although I'd rather keep everything in my fixtures class): 

def setUp(self): 
       User.objects.create_user('homer', '[email protected]', 'simpson')

Note that the password is simpson in both cases.

I've verified that this info is correctly being loaded into the test database time and time again. I can grab the User object using User.objects.get. I can verify the password is correct using 'check_password.' The user is active.

Yet, invariably, self.client.login(username='homer', password='simpson') FAILS. I'm baffled as to why. I think I've read every single Internet discussion pertaining to this. Can anybody help?

The login code in my unit test looks like this: 

    login = self.client.login(username='homer', password='simpson') 
    self.assertTrue(login)

Thanks.

6
djangounit-testingdjango-authenticationdjango-testing
What is the error message you got? – zs2020
The test case fails on the line, 'self.assertTrue(login)'; the login() function returns False. – thebossman
I basically copied&pasted your 2nd variation and it works on Django 1.3. Can you post the entire code including the imports? – Liorsion
This has been buried somewhere in a code base I no longer access. If I come across the problem I'll be sure to follow-up, but for the record, it was with an earlier version of Django; I think 1.0.2. – thebossman

6 Answers

139
votes

The code that doesn't work:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.test import Client

user = User.objects.create(username='testuser', password='12345')

c = Client()
logged_in = c.login(username='testuser', password='12345')

Why doesn't it work?

In the snippet above, when the User is created the actual password hash is set to be 12345. When the client calls the login method, the value of the password argument, 12345, is passed through the hash function, resulting in something like

hash('12345') = 'adkfh5lkad438....'

This is then compared to the hash stored in the database, and the client is denied access because 'adkfh5lkad438....' != '12345'

The Solution

The proper thing to do is call the set_password function, which passes the given string through the hash function and stores the result in User.password.

In addition, after calling set_password we must save the updated User object to the database:

user = User.objects.create(username='testuser')
user.set_password('12345')
user.save()

c = Client()
logged_in = c.login(username='testuser', password='12345')
60
votes

An easier way is to use force_login, new in Django 1.9.

force_login(user, backend=None)

For example:

class LoginView(TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.client.force_login(User.objects.get_or_create(username='testuser')[0])
5
votes

Can you check like below,

from django.test import TransactionTestCase, Client

class UserHistoryTest(TransactionTestCase):
    self.user = User.objects.create(username='admin', password='pass@123', email='[email protected]')
    self.client = Client() # May be you have missed this line

    def test_history(self):
        self.client.login(username=self.user.username, password='pass@123')
        # get_history function having login_required decorator
        response = self.client.post(reverse('get_history'), {'user_id': self.user.id})
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)

This test case worked for me.

5
votes

Check that django.contrib.sessions is added to INSTALLED_APPS because client.login() checks that it is and will always return false if it is not:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/es/1.9/topics/http/sessions/#enabling-sessions

0
votes
from django.test import TestCase
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.test import Client
class MyProfile(TestCase):
    @classmethod
    def setUpClass(self):
        self.username = 'dummy' + data + '@gmail.com'
        self.password = 'Dummy@123'
        user = User.objects.create(username=self.username)
        user.set_password(self.password)
        user.save()
        c = Client()
        self.client_object = c.login(username=self.username, password=self.password)
        self.content_type = "application/json"
        response = self.client_object.post('/api/my-profile/', content_type=self.content_type)
-4
votes

If anyone still following this , I think the attributes 'is_staff' and 'is_active' should be kept True for successfully logging in......

self.user = User.objects.create(username='testuser',password='pwd',is_active=1,is_staff=1)