Mocking a decorator in one Django app

Question

I want to test

if a views decorator works properly
if a proper view is called

So, here's decorator get_object and view features are in myapp.views.

@get_object
def features(request, object):
    return {}

I try mocking this:

new_view = Mock(__name__='features', return_value={})
decorated = get_object(new_view)

with patch('myapp.views.features') as features:
    features = decorated
    client = Client()
    response = client.get('/features')
    print new_view.call_args

This shows nothing, as if the mock object was not called, although I suppose it should have been.

How can I mock the decorated view properly?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 20 '13 at 05:52

When you call patch you are replacing your view with a brand new MagicMock. Since you are manually constructing a mock for you view you should do something more like (untested):

new_view = Mock(__name__='features', return_value={})
features = get_object(new_view)

with patch('myapp.views.features', features):
    client = Client()
    response = client.get('/features')
    print new_view.call_args

This will replace myapp.views.features with your hand rolled mock.

In general though I would recommend that you test your decorator in isolation without using the Django test client. Your really mixing two tests into one here. The first is making sure the decorator does it's duty and the other is making sure the request is properly routed.

Mocking a decorator in one Django app

1 Answers1