Manipulating the test client session doesn't work as documented

[Preston Timmons]

The example for manipulating session variables at this url does not work as documented:

​http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/topics/testing/#django.test.client.Client.session

def test_something(self):
    session = self.client.session
    session['somekey'] = 'test'
    session.save()

The test client returns a dictionary rather than a session object, unless a session object is manually added to the client or a view is called that initiates a session.

Attached is a patch that modifies the client to return a session object whenever django.contrib.sessions is installed.

[Preston Timmons]

This ticket is partially related to this one: ​http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/10899.

[Jacob]

It looks like #10899 would fix this, right? If so, it's a duplicate. I'm marking it as such; feel free to reopen if something about #10899 won't solve this usecase.

[Preston Timmons]

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for looking at this.

Yes, #10899 would solve this, but #10899 is a feature request to change how the test client session works. This ticket is a subset of #10899 to simply make the test client work as documented.

As long as #10899 isn't finished, I think either this patch should be committed or the docs should be updated to explain why the given example raises an exception.

I'm reopening this for now. If you think the bug isn't worthy to address on its own, I can move on #10899.

[Michael Radziej]

I've posted a question about how to deal with this on the django developer list.

​http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/browse_thread/thread/90e422f2a8231670

[Preston Timmons]

I updated the patch on #10899, which also fixes this bug. Jacob's explanation on the developers thread makes sense. I'm putting this back to duplicate status.