Writing tests for the Django admin with pytest-django#

I’m using pytest-django on a project and I wanted to write a test for a Django admin create form submission. Here’s the pattern I came up with:

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from .models import Location
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import pytest
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def test_admin_create_location_sets_public_id(client, admin_user):
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    client.force_login(admin_user)
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    assert Location.objects.count() == 0
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    response = client.post(
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        "/admin/core/location/add/",
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        {
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            "name": "hello",
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            "state": "13",
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            "location_type": "1",
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            "latitude": "0",
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            "longitude": "0",
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            "_save": "Save",
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        },
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    )
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    # 200 means the form is being re-displayed with errors
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    assert response.status_code == 302
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    location = Location.objects.order_by("-id")[0]
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    assert location.name == "hello"
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    assert location.public_id == "lc"

The trick here is to use the client and admin_user pytest-django fixtures (documented here) to get a configured test client and admin user object, then use client.force_login(admin_user) to obtain a session where that user is signed-in to the admin. Then write tests as normal.

Using the admin_client fixture#

Even better: use the admin_client fixture provided by pytest-django which is already signed into the admin:

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def test_admin_create_location_sets_public_id(admin_client):
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    response = admin_client.post(
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        "/admin/core/location/add/",
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    # ...

Before finding out that this was included I implemented my own version of it:

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import pytest
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@pytest.fixture()
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def admin_client(client, admin_user):
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    client.force_login(admin_user)
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    return client
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# Then write tests like this:
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def test_admin_create_location_sets_public_id(admin_client):
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    response = admin_client.post(
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        "/admin/core/location/add/",
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    # ...