To make a request, use:
app.get('/path', [params], [headers], [extra_environ], ...)
This call to get() does a request for /path, with any params, extra headers or WSGI environment keys that you indicate. This returns a TestResponse object, based on webob.response.Response. It has some additional methods to make it easier to test.
If you want to do a POST request, use:
app.post('/path', {'vars': 'values'}, [headers], [extra_environ],
[upload_files], ...)
Specifically the second argument of post() is the body of the request. You can pass in a dictionary (or dictionary-like object), or a string body (dictionary objects are turned into HTML form submissions).
You can also pass in the keyword argument upload_files, which is a list of [(fieldname, filename, field_content)]. File uploads use a different form submission data type to pass the structured data.
You can use put() and delete() for PUT and DELETE requests.
Webtest provide some facilities to test json apis.
The *_json methods will transform data to json before POST/PUT and add the correct Content-Type for you.
Also Response have an attribute .json to allow you to retrieve json contents as a python dict.
Doing POST request with webtest.TestApp.post_json():
>>> resp = app.post_json('/resource/', dict(id=1, value='value'))
>>> print(resp.request)
POST /resource/ HTTP/1.0
Content-Length: 27
Content-Type: application/json
...
>>> resp.json == {'id': 1, 'value': 'value'}
True
Doing GET request with webtest.TestApp.get() and using webtest.response.json:
To just parse body of the response, use Response.json:
>>> resp = app.get('/resource/1/')
>>> print(resp.request)
GET /resource/1/ HTTP/1.0
...
>>> resp.json == {'id': 1, 'value': 'value'}
True
The best way to simulate authentication is if your application looks in environ['REMOTE_USER'] to see if someone is authenticated. Then you can simply set that value, like:
app.get('/secret', extra_environ=dict(REMOTE_USER='bob'))
If you want all your requests to have this key, do:
app = TestApp(my_app, extra_environ=dict(REMOTE_USER='bob'))
You can use WebTest to test an application on a real web server. Just pass an url to the TestApp instead of a WSGI application:
app = TestApp('http://my.cool.websi.te')
You can also use the WEBTEST_TARGET_URL env var to switch from a WSGI application to a real server without having to modify your code:
os.environ['WEBTEST_TARGET_URL'] = 'http://my.cool.websi.te'
app = TestApp(wsgiapp) # will use the WEBTEST_TARGET_URL instead of the wsgiapp
By default the proxy will use httplib but you can use other backends by adding an anchor to your url:
app = TestApp('http://my.cool.websi.te#urllib3')
app = TestApp('http://my.cool.websi.te#requests')
app = TestApp('http://my.cool.websi.te#restkit')
A key concept behind WebTest is that there’s lots of things you shouldn’t have to check everytime you do a request. It is assumed that the response will either be a 2xx or 3xx response; if it isn’t an exception will be raised (you can override this for a request, of course). The WSGI application is tested for WSGI compliance with a slightly modified version of wsgiref.validate (modified to support arguments to InputWrapper.readline) automatically. Also it checks that nothing is printed to the environ['wsgi.errors'] error stream, which typically indicates a problem (one that would be non-fatal in a production situation, but if you are testing is something you should avoid).
To indicate another status is expected, use the keyword argument status=404 to (for example) check that it is a 404 status, or status="*" to allow any status.
If you expect errors to be printed, use expect_errors=True.