Login with code when using LiveServerTestCase with Django

Question

So I have a Selenium functional test suite. I've already tested login/signup functionality in a few tests by navigating the Selenium client to the signup page, entering in a username and password, and then telling Selenium to login with those same credentials. Now I want to test other parts of the "login required" areas of the site without having to tell Selenium to click and enter text into the test browser.

In other words, I would like to use something like this (which I use just fine in my view unit tests):

self.client = Client()  
self.user = User.objects.create_user('temporary', 'temporary@gmail.com', 'temporary')  
self.user.save()  
self.client.login(username='temporary', password='temporary')

in my Selenium tests so I don't have to repeat the lengthy manual login process in every one of my tests (since I've already tested the login system in earlier tests as I said before)

As of right now, I just copy and paste the 'login flow' Selenium instructions for each of my tests that require login. This causes my tests to take an addition 5-6 seconds each and it makes my function_tests.py file very bloated.

All my Googling has brought me to pages teaching me how to test login with Selenium.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can't login user from selenium driver. It's just impossible without some hacks.

But you can login once per TestCase by moving it to setUp method.

You can also avoid copy-pasting by creating you class inhereted from LiveServerTestCase.

UPDATE

This code worked for me:

self.client.login(username=superuser.username, password='superpassword') #Native django test client
cookie = self.client.cookies['sessionid']
self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/admin/')  #selenium will set cookie domain based on current page domain
self.browser.add_cookie({'name': 'sessionid', 'value': cookie.value, 'secure': False, 'path': '/'})
self.browser.refresh() #need to update page for logged in user
self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/admin/')

Answer 2

In Django 1.8 it is possible to create a pre-authenticated session cookie and pass it to Selenium.

In order to do this, you'll have to:

1. Create a new session in your backend;
2. Generate a cookie with that newly created session data;
3. Pass that cookie to your Selenium webdriver.

The session and cookie creation logic goes like this:

# create_session_cookie.py
from django.conf import settings
from django.contrib.auth import (
    SESSION_KEY, BACKEND_SESSION_KEY, HASH_SESSION_KEY,
    get_user_model
)
from django.contrib.sessions.backends.db import SessionStore

def create_session_cookie(username, password):

    # First, create a new test user
    user = get_user_model()
    user.objects.create_user(username=username, password=password)

    # Then create the authenticated session using the new user credentials
    session = SessionStore()
    session[SESSION_KEY] = user.pk
    session[BACKEND_SESSION_KEY] = settings.AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS[0]
    session[HASH_SESSION_KEY] = user.get_session_auth_hash()
    session.save()

    # Finally, create the cookie dictionary
    cookie = {
        'name': settings.SESSION_COOKIE_NAME,
        'value': session.session_key,
        'secure': False,
        'path': '/',
    }
    return cookie

Now, inside your Selenium tests:

#selenium_tests.py

# assuming self.webdriver is the selenium.webdriver obj.
from create_session_cookie import create_session_cookie

session_cookie = create_session_cookie(
    email='test@email.com', password='top_secret'
)

# visit some url in your domain to setup Selenium.
# (404 pages load the quickest)
self.driver.get('your-url' + '/404-non-existent/')

# add the newly created session cookie to selenium webdriver.
self.driver.add_cookie(session_cookie)

# refresh to exchange cookies with the server.
self.driver.refresh()

# This time user should present as logged in.
self.driver.get('your-url')