Test client doesn't attach user attribute to request

[danielquinn]

I'm trying out the test client and my tests are exploding because I have signal handlers that listing for user_logged_in() and attempt to access request.user. A brief stroll through the Django code for login() tells me that it won't attach user to the request unless the attribute is already set.

Given that the test client creates the request without attaching a .user attribute, this will never work as it is. Could this be fixed by simply adding request.user = None right after this line?

[Bouke]

I'm not that familiar with the test client, however I find it strange that request.user would not be available. It should be set by the AuthenticationMiddleware. Are you sure you've setup all middleware correctly?

[danielquinn]

It does, but in a typical Django setup, AuthenticationMiddleware comes later in the stack than SessionMiddleware. I agree that it's strange that request.user isn't available, but I'm just working with defaults here and the test client isn't working, hence this issue report :-(

[Bouke]

After snooping around in the code of Django's auth.login() code, I found what you're referring to:

def login(request, user, backend=None):
    # (...)
    if hasattr(request, 'user'):
        request.user = user
    rotate_token(request)
    user_logged_in.send(sender=user.__class__, request=request, user=user)

So the signal user_logged_in will be passed the request that was passed to the login method. Since this package's (and also upstream's) test client doesn't set request.user, this property is also not available from your signal handler. The test client's login method doesn't use any middleware, so that's why AuthenticationMiddleware doesn't have any effect.

Could you test the fix that you propose in your initial comment? I think it should work fine.

[danielquinn]

It does. I just subclassed user_sessions.utils.tests.Client and overrided login() to change:

request = HttpRequest()

to

request = HttpRequest()
request.user = None

And everything works as expected.

Sorry, I'd submit a proper pull request, but I'm neck-deep in a legacy project I'm trying to bring up to speed, so this quick hack was all that I had time for. I just thought that upstream would like the heads-up.