Disabling @login_required while unit-testing flask with flask-login

Question

I am unit testing my flask app which uses the flask-login extension.

I am setting up all my tests like this using webtest:

class TestCase(unittest.TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        app.config['TESTING'] = True
        self.client = webtest.TestApp(app)

But when I try to visit urls through self.client.get() which are decorated with @login_required, I get a 401 error with a message that I am not authorized to access the url.

According to the documentation https://flask-login.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#protecting-views and this discussion, setting the config value of 'TESTING' to True should disable the login requirements, but that doesn't seem to be working for me.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

This because Flask-Login caching TESTING or LOGIN_DISABLED on init_app (https://github.com/maxcountryman/flask-login/blob/master/flask_login.py#L164).

So if you create application and then set something in config then you config changes will ignored.

Better way use application factory with separated configs for production and tests, it also decrease probability get errors with not cleaned application state in tests.

The easiest way reinit login_manager:

class TestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        app.config['TESTING'] = True
        app.login_manager.init_app(app)
        self.client = webtest.TestApp(app)

Answer 2

from flask login documentation it's said that :

It can be convenient to globally turn off authentication when unit testing. To enable this, if the application configuration variable LOGIN_DISABLED is set to True, this decorator will be ignored.

if you are using application factory design pattern add this to your testing config :

LOGIN_DISABLED = True

or you can add it while creating the app like this :

class TestCase(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        app.config['LOGIN_DISABLED'] = True
        self.client = webtest.TestApp(app)

Hope this will help the others who will have the same problem

Answer 3

I'm not sure if this will help, but:

in my old flaskr project file, I had the configurations in my "flaskr.py" file, and they looked like this:

# configuration
DATABASE = 'flaskr.db'
DEBUG = True
SECRET_KEY = 'development key'
USERNAME = 'admin'
PASSWORD = 'default'

So maybe you would have

TESTING = True

?