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Django REST Framework - Array in a payload is not received when unit testing

Ján Vorčák

@jvorcak

django testing drf django rest framework

Problem statement

When sending data in Django REST framework in a unit test, all data are recieved correctly apart from those with list type.

class JobsAPITestCase(TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        User.objects.create_user(username='test', password='test-pass')

        self.client = APIClient()
        self.client.login(username='test', password='test-pass')

    def test_job_can_be_created(self):
        response = self.client.post(f'/api/jobs/', {
            "name": "Test",
            # TODO - for some reason, tags is not in validated_data in tests
            # however it's present in real app
            "tags": [
                {"id": 2, "label": "Backend"},
            ]
        })

Solution

The solution was to pass format=json to the post method.

The following snippet works:

class JobsAPITestCase(TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        User.objects.create_user(username='test', password='test-pass')

        self.client = APIClient()
        self.client.login(username='test', password='test-pass')

    def test_job_can_be_created(self):
        response = self.client.post(f'/api/jobs/', {
            "name": "Test",
            "tags": [
                {"id": 2, "label": "Backend"},
            ]
        }, format="json")
        # tags should be present in validated_data now