login() in Django testing framework

Question

I have started using Django\'s testing framework, and everything was working fine until I started testing authenticated pages.

For the sake of simplicity, let\'s say tha

Answer 1

It can often be useful to use a custom auth backend that bypassess any sort of authentication during testing:

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model

class TestcaseUserBackend(object):
    def authenticate(self, testcase_user=None):
        return testcase_user

    def get_user(self, user_id):
        User = get_user_model()
        return User.objects.get(pk=user_id)

Then, during tests, add yourapp.auth_backends.TestcaseUserBackend to your AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS:

AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [
    "akindi.testing.auth_backends.TestcaseUserBackend",
]

Then, during tests, you can simply call:

from django.contrib.auth import login
user = User.objects.get(…)
login(testcase_user=user)