get_user_model().objects.all() includes AnonymousUser; testing w/ TestCase

Using Django Getting Started
1

I’m finding that when a TestCase is constructed, an <User: AnonymousUser> is automatically created in the test database. This was discovered when I queried all users with get_user_model().objects.all() within multiple TestCases that I have written; it is also considered a type of User oddly enough (see below)

class TestUserProfileContext(TestCase):

    @classmethod
    def setUpTestData(cls):
        cls.viewed_user = get_user_model().objects.create_user("ItsYou")
        request = RequestFactory().get(reverse("authors:profile", kwargs={'id': 1}))
        cls.view = UserProfilePage()
        cls.view.setup(request, id=1)
        cls.view_context = cls.view.get_context_data()

        stored_users = get_user_model().objects.all()
        print(stored_users)

    def test_viewed_profile_of_user(self):
        self.assertIsInstance(self.view, Page)
        self.assertIn('user', self.view_context)
        self.assertEqual(self.view_context['object'], self.viewed_user)


-> stored_users = get_user_model().objects.all()
(Pdb) n
> c:\..\authors\test\test_views.py(129)setUpTestData()
-> print(stored_users)
(Pdb) n
<QuerySet [<User: AnonymousUser>, <User: ItsYou>]>
--Return--
> c:\..\authors\test\test_views.py(129)setUpTestData()->None
-> print(stored_users)
(Pdb) anon_user = stored_users[0]
(Pdb) type(anon_user)
<class 'authors.models.User'>

To address the User model, I have created a custom User:

class User(AbstractUser):

    username = CharField(
        unique=True, max_length=16,
        error_messages={
            "unique": "Username not available"
        }
    )

Upon investigating further, I queried all users in python manage.py shell. The queryset returned in fact included <User: AnonymousUser>, and I deleted it from within the shell.

(venv) λ python manage.py shell
Python 3.9.6 (tags/v3.9.6:db3ff76, Jun 28 2021, 15:26:21) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
(InteractiveConsole)
>>> from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
>>> get_user_model().objects.all()
<QuerySet [<User: Python$!>, <User: y_i_am_nobody>, <User: User_00B>, <User: BinnyBot>, <User: supreextreme>, <User: AnonymousUser>, <User: itsmedummy>, <User: itsmestupid>]>

After deleting the anonymous user, my test cases still have <User: AnonymousUser> when querying the User model. Why is the AnonymousUser being stored in the test database and how can I resolve this so it’s no longer stored?

2

I’d investigate that object more closely.

Are you sure it’s the “AnonymousUser” object and not a User object with that name?

I’d examine it in the shell to verify its type and what its attributes are.

3

It appears to be an instance of User, but I honestly cannot figure out what is causing it to be created? I’m importing TestCase as from django.test import TestCase so I don’t see that causing the issue.

<QuerySet [<User: AnonymousUser>, <User: ItsYou>]>
--Return--
> c:\..\authors\test\test_views.py(129)setUpTestData()->None
-> print(stored_users)
(Pdb) anon_user = stored_users[0]
(Pdb) type(anon_user)
<class 'authors.models.User'>

 vars(anon_user)
{'_state': <django.db.models.base.ModelState object at 0x000001CBE77E34F0>,
 'id': 1, 'password': '!69O0p2PieaPK7Y1dHYEspdr2EcUnikWYJrz4IfSw', 
'last_login': None, 'is_superuser': False, 'first_name': '', 'last_name': '', 
'email': '', 'is_staff': False, 'is_active': True, 
'date_joined': datetime.datetime(2022, 7, 14, 20, 6, 24, 261424, tzinfo=<UTC>),
 'username': 'AnonymousUser'}