Testing django signals properly
| by jpic | python djangoAsserting that signals were sent properly can be a bit tricky: they must be sent in a particular order with specific arguments.
Fortunately, mock-django provides plenty of cool features, including a nice signal receiver mock. The only problem with mock-django is that it’s not documented. So I had to reverse-engineer and here’s what I’ve found: the best way to test a signal is to use the call_args_list property of the receiver mock.
A simple example (courtesy of django-appstore), asserts that your_function sends the right signal:
import unittest
from mock import call
from mock_django.signals import mock_signal_receiver
import your_function
class YourTestCase(unittest.TestCase):
def test_001_simple_app(self):
app = App.objects.create(name='artists',
category=AppCategory.objects.create(name='art'))
appversion = AppVersion.objects.create(app=app, version=0)
env = Environment.objects.create(name='default')
with mock_signal_receiver(post_app_install) as install_receiver:
env.install(appversion)
# test that the signal was called once with the right arguments
self.assertEqual(install_receiver.call_args_list, [
call(signal=post_app_install, sender=env,
appversion=appversion),
])To test that a signal was called several times, with the right arguments in the right order:
def test_002_simple_dependency(self):
artists_app = App.objects.create(name='artists',
category=AppCategory.objects.create(name='art'))
artists_appversion = AppVersion.objects.create(app=artists_app, version=0)
artworks_app = App.objects.create(name='artworks',
category=AppCategory.objects.get(name='art'))
artworks_appversion = AppVersion.objects.create(app=artworks_app, version=0)
artworks_appversion.dependencies.add(artists_appversion)
env = Environment.objects.create(name='default')
with mock_signal_receiver(post_app_install) as install_receiver:
env.install(artworks_appversion)
self.assertEqual(install_receiver.call_args_list, [
call(signal=post_app_install, sender=env,
appversion=artists_appversion),
call(signal=post_app_install, sender=env,
appversion=artworks_appversion),
])