How to populate request.META in the test client?

Using Django Mystery Errors
1

I have a simple test case:

from django.template.loader import get_template
from django.test import TestCase, Client
from django.test.utils import override_settings

HEADERS = {
    'user-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:134.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/134.0',
}

class RenderTestCase(TestCase):
    @override_settings(DEBUG=True)
    def test_csrf_render(self):
        c = Client(headers=HEADERS)
        req = c.request()
        t = get_template('csrf.html')
        actual = t.render({'request': req}, req)
        print(repr(actual))

Where csrf.html is just

{% csrf_token %}

The error I get is

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/test/utils.py", line 446, in inner
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/vinay/projects/django-base/base/test/test_components.py", line 45, in test_csrf_render
    actual = t.render({'request': req}, req)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/backends/django.py", line 107, in render
    return self.template.render(context)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 169, in render
    with context.bind_template(self):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/contextlib.py", line 135, in __enter__
    return next(self.gen)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/context.py", line 256, in bind_template
    context = processor(self.request)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/context_processors.py", line 41, in debug
    if settings.DEBUG and request.META.get("REMOTE_ADDR") in settings.INTERNAL_IPS:
AttributeError: 'HttpResponse' object has no attribute 'META'

If I comment out the override_settings, I get a slightly different error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/vinay/projects/django-base/base/test/test_components.py", line 45, in test_csrf_render
    actual = t.render({'request': req}, req)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/backends/django.py", line 107, in render
    return self.template.render(context)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/base.py", line 169, in render
    with context.bind_template(self):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/contextlib.py", line 135, in __enter__
    return next(self.gen)
  File "/home/vinay/.local/share/virtualenvs/django-base/lib/python3.10/site-packages/django/template/context.py", line 256, in bind_template
    context = processor(self.request)
  File "/home/vinay/projects/django-base/base/views.py", line 62, in context
    ua = user_agent_parser.Parse(request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])
AttributeError: 'HttpResponse' object has no attribute 'META'

Both errors are from not having a request.META, so how do I make sure request.META is populated in the test client?

2

You’re passing the response as the request. (client.request() makes an HTTP request…)

You want to use RequestFactory in your test as you’ve written it.

3

Ah, right. I was confused by:

class RequestFactory:
    def request(self, **request):
        "Construct a generic request object."
        return WSGIRequest(self._base_environ(**request))

and

class AsyncRequestFactory(RequestFactory):
    def request(self, **request):
        """Construct a generic request object."""

and

class Client(ClientMixin, RequestFactory):
    def request(self, **request):
        """
        Make a generic request.

I should have read more carefully, thanks for pointing it out :smile: