Welcome to part 2 of the tutorial! Hope you've had a little break, maybe a nice chocolate biscuit, and are super-excited to do more!

Tutorial 2 - Customising the admin site

Last time we managed to get the admin site up and running, this time it's time to actualy get it working the way we want it to, so that we can use it to create new polls for our site.

Here's an outline of what we're going to do:

  • Create an FT that can create a new poll via the admin site
  • Customise the human-readable display for polls
  • Create "Choice" related model objects to go with polls
  • Add choices to the admin site

Inspecting the admin site to decide what to test next

Let's fire up the development server, and do a bit of browsing around the admin site - that way we can figure out what we want the "Polls" bit to look like.:

python manage.py runserver

Then, open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000/admin/. Login with the admin username and password (admin / adm1n).

If you go into the Polls section and try and create a new Poll, you need to click on a link that says "Add Poll" - let's add that to our FT. In fts/tests.py:

    # She now sees a couple of hyperlink that says "Polls"
    polls_links = self.browser.find_elements_by_link_text('Polls')
    self.assertEquals(len(polls_links), 2)

    # The second one looks more exciting, so she clicks it
    polls_links[1].click()

    # She is taken to the polls listing page, which shows she has
    # no polls yet
    body = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('body')
    self.assertIn('0 polls', body.text)

    # She sees a link to 'add' a new poll, so she clicks it
    new_poll_link = self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('Add poll')
    new_poll_link.click()

mysite/fts/tests.py

find_element_by_link_text is a very useful Selenium function - it's a good combination of the presentation layer (what the user sees when they click a link) and the functionality of the site (hyperlink one of the major ways that users actually interact with a website)

Now, when you click the link you should see a menu a bit like this.

/static/images/add_poll_need_verbose_name_for_pub_date.png

Pretty neat, but Pub date isn't a very nice label for our publication date field. Django normally generates labels for its admin fields automatically, by just taking the field name and capitalising it, converting underscores to spaces. So that works well for question, but not so well for pub_date.

So that's one thing we'll want to change. Let's add a test for that to the end of our FT

    # She sees some input fields for "Question" and "Date published"
    body = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('body')
    self.assertIn('Question:', body.text)
    self.assertIn('Date published:', body.text)

mysite/fts/tests.py

Mmmh, "Date Published", much nicer.

More ways of finding elements on the page using Selenium

If you try filling in a new Poll, and fill in the 'date' entry but not a 'time'. You'll find django complains that the field is required. So, in our test, we need to fill in three fields: question, date, and time.

In order to get Selenium to find the text input boxes for those fields, there are several options:

find_element_by_id
find_element_by_xpath
find_element_by_link_text
find_element_by_name
find_element_by_tag_name
find_element_by_css_selector

And several others - find out more in the selenium documentation (choose Python as your language for the examples), or just by looking at the source code: http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html

In our case by name is a useful way of finding fields, because the name attribute is usually associated with input fields from forms. If you take a look at the HTML source code for the Django admin page for entering a new poll (either the raw source, or using a tool like Firebug, or developer tools in Google Chrome), you'll find out that the 'name' for our three fields are question, pub_date_0 and pub_date_1.:

 for="id_question" class="required">Question:
 id="id_question" type="text" class="vTextField" name="question" maxlength="200" />

 for="id_pub_date_0" class="required">Date published:
 class="datetime">
    Date:
     id="id_pub_date_0" type="text" class="vDateField" name="pub_date_0" size="10" />
     />
    Time:
     id="id_pub_date_1" type="text" class="vTimeField" name="pub_date_1" size="8" />

html source for admin site

Let's use them in our FT

    # She sees some input fields for "Question" and "Date published"
    body = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('body')
    self.assertIn('Question:', body.text)
    self.assertIn('Date published:', body.text)

    # She types in an interesting question for the Poll
    question_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('question')
    question_field.send_keys("How awesome is Test-Driven Development?")

    # She sets the date and time of publication - it'll be a new year's
    # poll!
    date_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('pub_date_0')
    date_field.send_keys('01/01/12')
    time_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('pub_date_1')
    time_field.send_keys('00:00')

mysite/fts/tests.py

We can also use the CSS selector to pick up the "Save" button

    # Gertrude clicks the save button
    save_button = self.browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[value='Save']")
    save_button.click()

mysite/fts/tests.py

Then, when you hit 'Save', you'll see that we get taken back to the Polls listings page. You'll notice that the new poll is just described as "Poll object".

/static/images/django_admin_poll_object_needs_verbose_name.png

Django lets you give them more descriptive names, including any attribute of the object. So let's say we want our polls listed by their question... And let's call that the end of our FT - you can get rid of the self.fail.

    # She is returned to the "Polls" listing, where she can see her
    # new poll, listed as a clickable link
    new_poll_links = self.browser.find_elements_by_link_text(
            "How awesome is Test-Driven Development?"
    )
    self.assertEquals(len(new_poll_links), 1)

    # Satisfied, she goes back to sleep

mysite/fts/tests.py

That's it for now - if you've lost track in amongst all the copy & pasting, you can compare your version to mine, which is hosted here:

Human-readable names for models and their attributes

Let's re-run our tests. Here's our first expected failure, the fact that "Pub date" isn't the label we want for our field ("Date published"):

python manage.py test fts

======================================================================
FAIL: test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site (tests.PollsTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/mysite/fts/tests.py", line 43, in
  test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site
    self.assertIn('Date published:', body.text)
    django.kill() #TODO: doesn't kill child processes, fix
AssertionError: 'Date published:' not found in u'Django administration\n
Welcome, admin. Change password / Log out\n
Home \u203a Polls \u203a Polls \u203a Add poll\nAdd poll\nQuestion:\n
Pub date:\nDate:  Today | \nTime:  Now | '

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unit testing the verbose name for pub_date

Django stores human-readable names for model attributes in a special attribute called verbose_name. Let's write a unit test that checks the verbose name for our pub_date field. Add the following method to polls/tests.py

def test_verbose_name_for_pub_date(self):
    for field in Poll._meta.fields:
        if field.name ==  'pub_date':
            self.assertEquals(field.verbose_name, 'Date published')

mysite/polls/tests.py

To write this test, we have to grovel through the _meta attribute on the Poll class. That's some Django-voodoo right there, and you may have to take my word for it, but it's a way to get at some of the information about the metadata on the model. There's more info here (James Bennet is one of the original Django developers, and wrote a book about it too) http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2007/nov/04/working-models/

Anyway, running our tests with python manage.py test polls gives us our expected fail:

AssertionError: 'pub date' != 'Date published'

Now that we have a unit test, we can implement! Let's make a change in models.py

class Poll(models.Model):
    question = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(verbose_name='Date published')

mysite/polls/models.py

Run the unit tests again to check that's worked:

$ python manage.py test polls
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.001s

Now, re-running our functional tests, things have moved on:

$ python manage.py test fts

======================================================================
FAIL: test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site (tests.PollsTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/mysite/fts/tests.py", line 63, in
  test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site
    self.assertEquals(len(new_poll_links), 1)
AssertionError: 0 != 1

----------------------------------------------------------------------

We're almost there - the FT has managed to create and save the new poll, but when it gets back to the listings page, it can't find a hyperlink whose text is the new question - it's still listed as an unhelpful "Poll object"

To make this work, we need to tell Django how to print out a Poll object. This happens in the __unicode__ method. As usual, we unit test first, in this case it's a very simple one -

def test_poll_objects_are_named_after_their_question(self):
    p = Poll()
    p.question = 'How is babby formed?'
    self.assertEquals(unicode(p), 'How is babby formed?')

mysite/polls/tests.py

Running the unit tests shows the following error:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_poll_objects_are_named_after_their_question (polls.tests.PollModelTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 37, in
  test_poll_objects_are_named_after_their_question
    self.assertEquals(unicode(p), 'How is babby formed?')
AssertionError: u'Poll object' != 'How is babby formed?'

----------------------------------------------------------------------

And the fix is simple too - we define a __unicode__ method on our Poll class, in models.py

class Poll(models.Model):
    question = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(verbose_name='Date published')

    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.question

mysite/polls/models.py

And you should now find that the unit tests pass:

$ python manage.py test polls
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
...
Ran 3 tests in 0.001s

And now, our functional tests should get to the end:

AssertionError: todo: finish tests

Let's do just that.

Adding Choices to the Poll admin page

Now, our polls currently only have a question - we want to give each poll a set of possible answers, or "choices", for the user to pick between. Ideally, we want Gertrude to be able to fill in the choices on the same screen as she defines the question. Thankfully, Django allows this - you can see it in the Django tutorial, you can have Choices on the same page as the "Add new Poll" page.

So let's add that as an intermediate step in our FT, in between where Gertrude enters the question, and when she hits save.

    [...]
    time_field.send_keys('00:00')

    # She sees she can enter choices for the Poll.  She adds three
    choice_1 = self.browser.find_element_by_name('choice_set-0-choice')
    choice_1.send_keys('Very awesome')
    choice_2 = self.browser.find_element_by_name('choice_set-1-choice')
    choice_2.send_keys('Quite awesome')
    choice_3 = self.browser.find_element_by_name('choice_set-2-choice')
    choice_3.send_keys('Moderately awesome')

    # Gertrude clicks the save button
    save_button = self.browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[value='Save']")
    [...]

mysite/fts/tests.py

For now you'll have to trust me on those choice_set-0-choice name attributes! Let's try running our fts again:

NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"name","selector":"choice_set-0-choice"}'

Relations between models: Polls and Choices

Right, naturally the FT can't find the "choice" elements to fill in on the admin page, because there's no such thing yet! Let's go ahead and create our "Choice" model then. As usual, we start with some unit tests - in polls/tests.py

class ChoiceModelTest(TestCase):

    def test_creating_some_choices_for_a_poll(self):
        # start by creating a new Poll object
        poll = Poll()
        poll.question="What's up?"
        poll.pub_date = timezone.now()
        poll.save()

        # now create a Choice object
        choice = Choice()

        # link it with our Poll
        choice.poll = poll

        # give it some text
        choice.choice = "doin' fine..."

        # and let's say it's had some votes
        choice.votes = 3

        # save it
        choice.save()

        # try retrieving it from the database, using the poll object's reverse
        # lookup
        poll_choices = poll.choice_set.all()
        self.assertEquals(poll_choices.count(), 1)

        # finally, check its attributes have been saved
        choice_from_db = poll_choices[0]
        self.assertEquals(choice_from_db, choice)
        self.assertEquals(choice_from_db.choice, "doin' fine...")
        self.assertEquals(choice_from_db.votes, 3)

mysite/polls/tests.py

Also remember to add the import to the top of the file

from polls.models import Choice, Poll

mysite/polls/tests.py

And we may as well give it something to import too - in polls/models.py

class Choice(object):
    pass

mysite/polls/models.py

And let's do a unit test run:

python manage.py test polls

======================================================================
ERROR: test_creating_some_choices_for_a_poll (polls.tests.ChoiceModelTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/TDDjango/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 62, in test_creating_some_choices_for_a_poll
    choice.save()
AttributeError: 'Choice' object has no attribute 'save'

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 4 tests in 0.745s

FAILED (errors=1)

No attribute save - let's make our Choice class into a proper Django model:

class Choice(models.Model):
    pass

OK, our tests are complaining that the "poll" object has no attribute choice_set. This is a special attribute that allows you to retrieve all the related Choice objects for a particular poll, and it gets added by Django whenever you define a relationship between two models - a foreign key relationship for example.

You can see some more examples of creating Polls and related Choices here:

Let's add that relationship now

class Choice(models.Model):
    poll = models.ForeignKey(Poll)

mysite/polls/models.py

Re-running the unit tests, we get:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_creating_some_choices_for_a_poll (polls.tests.ChoiceModelTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/TDDjango/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 72, in test_creating_some_choices_for_a_poll
    self.assertEquals(choice_from_db.choice, "doin' fine")
AttributeError: 'Choice' object has no attribute 'choice'

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's give Choice a choice...

class Choice(models.Model):
    poll = models.ForeignKey(Poll)
    choice = models.CharField(max_length=200)

mysite/polls/models.py

Tests again:

AttributeError: 'Choice' object has no attribute 'votes'

Let's add votes

class Choice(models.Model):
    poll = models.ForeignKey(Poll)
    choice = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    votes = models.IntegerField()

mysite/polls/models.py

Another test run?:

....
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 4 tests in 0.003s

OK