django-webtest with multiple test client

Question

In django-webtest, every test TestCase subclass comes with self.app, which is an instance of webtest.TestApp, then I could make it login as user A by self.app.get('/',user='A').

However, if I want to test the behavior if for both user A and user B in a test, how should I do it?

It seems that self.app is just DjangoTestApp() with extra_environ passed in. Is it appropriate to just create another instance of it?

Answer 1

I haven't tried setting up another instance of DjangoTestApp as you suggest, but I have written complex tests where, after making requests as user A I have then switched to making requests as user B with no issue, in each case passing the user or username in when making the request, e.g. self.app.get('/', user'A') as you have already written.

The only part which did not work as expected was when making unauthenticated requests, e.g. self.app.get('/', user=None). This did not work as expected and instead continued to use the user from the request immediately prior to this one.

To reset the app state (which should allow you to emulate most workflows with several users in a sequential manner) you can run self.renew_app() which will refresh your app state, effectively logging the current user out.

To test simultaneous access by more than one user (your question does not specify exactly what you are trying to test) then setting up another instance of DjangoTestApp would seem to be worth exploring.