Part 3 - A normal web page, using Django views and templates

Welcome to part 3 of the tutorial! This week we'll finally get into writing our own web pages, rather than using the Django Admin site. Here's a summary of what we'll get up to:

Let's pick up our FT where we left off - we now have the admin site set up to add Polls, including Choices. We now want to flesh out what the user sees.

Writing the FT as comments

Let's start by writing out our FT as human-readable comments, which describe the user's actions, and the expected behaviour of the site

Create a new test method inside fts/tests.py.

def test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site(self):
    [...]
    self.assertEquals(len(new_poll_links), 1)

    # Satisfied, she goes back to sleep

def test_voting_on_a_new_poll(self):
    # First, Gertrude the administrator logs into the admin site and
    # creates a couple of new Polls, and their response choices

    # Now, Herbert the regular user goes to the homepage of the site. He
    # sees a list of polls.

    # He clicks on the link to the first Poll, which is called
    # 'How awesome is test-driven development?'

    # He is taken to a poll 'results' page, which says
    # "no-one has voted on this poll yet"

    # He also sees a form, which offers him several choices.
    # He decided to select "very awesome"

    # He clicks 'submit'

    # The page refreshes, and he sees that his choice
    # has updated the results.  they now say
    # "100 %: very awesome".

    # The page also says "1 votes"

    # Satisfied, he goes back to sleep

mysite/fts/tests.py

Setting up data for the test via the admin site

A nice little test, but that very first comment rather glosses over a lot. Let's split out the Gertrude bit into its own method, for tidiness, and copy and paste in some code from the admin test.

You'll see I've changed things slightly, because in the admin test we entered just one poll and one set of choices, whereas here we're doing several - so you'll see there's a little loop, and I'm storing the polls' questions and choices in a couple of namedtuples.

(If you've never seen a namedtuple in Python before, you should definitely look them up! They're a neat way of specificying a structured data type - more info here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2970608/what-are-named-tuples-in-python)

from collections import namedtuple
from django.test import LiveServerTestCase
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

PollInfo = namedtuple('PollInfo', ['question', 'choices'])
POLL1 = PollInfo(
    question="How awesome is Test-Driven Development?",
    choices=[
        'Very awesome',
        'Quite awesome',
        'Moderately awesome',
    ],
)
POLL2 = PollInfo(
    question="Which workshop treat do you prefer?",
    choices=[
        'Beer',
        'Pizza',
        'The Acquisition of Knowledge',
    ],
)


class PollsTest(LiveServerTestCase):
    fixtures = ['admin_user.json']

    def setUp(self):
        self.browser = webdriver.Firefox()
        self.browser.implicitly_wait(3)

    def tearDown(self):
        self.browser.quit()

    def test_can_create_new_poll_via_admin_site(self):
        # Gertrude opens her web browser, and goes to the admin page
        self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/admin/')

        [...]
        self.assertEquals(len(new_poll_links), 1)

        # Satisfied, she goes back to sleep

    def _setup_polls_via_admin(self):
        # Gertrude logs into the admin site
        self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/admin/')
        username_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('username')
        username_field.send_keys('admin')
        password_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('password')
        password_field.send_keys('adm1n')
        password_field.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)

        # She has a number of polls to enter.  For each one, she:
        for poll_info in [POLL1, POLL2]:
            # Follows the link to the Polls app, and adds a new Poll
            self.browser.find_elements_by_link_text('Polls')[1].click()
            self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('Add poll').click()

            # Enters its name, and uses the 'today' and 'now' buttons to set
            # the publish date
            question_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('question')
            question_field.send_keys(poll_info.question)
            self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('Today').click()
            self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('Now').click()

            # Sees she can enter choices for the Poll on this same page,
            # so she does
            for i, choice_text in enumerate(poll_info.choices):
                choice_field = self.browser.find_element_by_name('choice_set-%d-choice' % i)
                choice_field.send_keys(choice_text)

            # Saves her new poll
            save_button = self.browser.find_element_by_css_selector("input[value='Save']")
            save_button.click()

            # Is returned to the "Polls" listing, where she can see her
            # new poll, listed as a clickable link by its name
            new_poll_links = self.browser.find_elements_by_link_text(
                    poll_info.question
            )
            self.assertEquals(len(new_poll_links), 1)

            # She goes back to the root of the admin site
            self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/admin/')

        # She logs out of the admin site
        self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('Log out').click()


    def test_voting_on_a_new_poll(self):
        # First, Gertrude the administrator logs into the admin site and
        # creates a couple of new Polls, and their response choices
        self._setup_polls_via_admin()

        self.fail('TODO')
        # Now, Herbert the regular user goes to the homepage of the site. He
        [...]

mysite/fts/tests.py

Now, if you try running that test, you should see selenium run through and enter the two polls, and then exit with the "TODO":

======================================================================
FAIL: test_voting_on_a_new_poll (tests.TestPolls)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/fts/tests.py", line 76, in test_voting_on_a_new_poll
    self.fail('TODO')
AssertionError: TODO
----------------------------------------------------------------------

If it fails any earlier than that, you may not have completed the last couple of tutorials in quite the same way I specified. Figure out what's wrong!

At last! An FT for a normal page

Let's write the exciting bit of our test, where Herbert the normal user opens up our website, sees some polls and votes on them.

def test_voting_on_a_new_poll(self):
    # First, Gertrude the administrator logs into the admin site and
    # creates a couple of new Polls, and their response choices
    self._setup_polls_via_admin()

    # Now, Herbert the regular user goes to the homepage of the site. He
    # sees a list of polls.
    self.browser.get(self.live_server_url)
    heading = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('h1')
    self.assertEquals(heading.text, 'Polls')

    # He clicks on the link to the first Poll, which is called
    # 'How awesome is test-driven development?'
    first_poll_title = POLL1.question
    self.browser.find_element_by_link_text(first_poll_title).click()

    # He is taken to a poll 'results' page, which says
    # "no-one has voted on this poll yet"
    main_heading = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('h1')
    self.assertEquals(main_heading.text, 'Poll Results')
    sub_heading = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('h2')
    self.assertEquals(sub_heading.text, first_poll_title)
    body = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('body')
    self.assertIn('No-one has voted on this poll yet', body.text)

    self.fail('TODO')

    # He clicks on the link to the first Poll, which is called
    [...]

mysite/fts/tests.py

We've started with the first bit, where Herbert goes to the main page of the site, we check that he can see a Poll there, and that he can click on it. Then we look for the default 'no votes yet' message on the next page.

Let's run that, and see where we get:

AssertionError: u'Page not found (404)' != 'PollsNoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"tag name","selector":"h1"}'

URLS and view functions, and the Django Test Client

The FT is telling us that going to the root url (/) doesn't have any

elements in - that's because we haven't created it yet! We need to tell Django what kind of web page to return for the root of our site - the home page if you like.

Django uses a file called urls.py, to route visitors to the python function that will deal with producing a response for them. These functions are called views in Django terminology, and they live in views.py.

(This is essentially an MVC pattern, there's some discussion of it here: )

Let's add a new test to polls/tests.py. I'm going to use the Django Test Client, which has some helpful features for testing views. More info here:

We'll create a new class to test our home page view:

[...]
class HomePageViewTest(TestCase):

    def test_root_url_shows_all_polls(self):
        # set up some polls
        poll1 = Poll(question='6 times 7', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll1.save()
        poll2 = Poll(question='life, the universe and everything', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll2.save()

        response = self.client.get('/')

        self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
        self.assertIn(poll2.question, response.content)

mysite/polls/tests.py

Now, our first run of the tests will probably complain of a with:

TemplateDoesNotExist: 404.html

Django wants us to create a template for our "404 error" page. We'll come back to that later. For now, let's make the / url return a real HTTP response.

First we'll create a dummy view in polls/views.py:

def home(request):
    pass

mysite/polls/views.py

Now let's hook up this view inside mysite/urls.py:

from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$', 'polls.views.home'),
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

mysite/mysite/urls.py

urls.py maps urls (specified as regular expressions) to views. I've used dotted-string notation to specify the name of the view, but you could also use the actual view, like this:

from polls.views import home
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$', home),
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

mysite/mysite/urls.py

That would have the advantage that it checks that the view exists and imports OK. It's a personal preference, but the official tutorial uses dot-notation, so I thought we'd stick with that. Read more here:

Re-running our tests should show us a different error:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 92, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    response = client.get('/')
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/test/client.py", line 445, in get
    response = super(Client, self).get(path, data=data, **extra)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/test/client.py", line 229, in get
    return self.request(**r)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 129, in get_response
    raise ValueError("The view %s.%s didn't return an HttpResponse object." % (callback.__module__, view_name))
ValueError: The view polls.views.home didn't return an HttpResponse object.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's get the view to return an HttpResponse:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def home(request):
    return HttpResponse()

mysite/polls/views.py

The tests are now more instructive:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 96, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
AssertionError: '6 times 7' not found in ''
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Django Template system

So far, we're returning a blank page. Now, to get the tests to pass, it would be simple enough to just return a response that contained the questions of our two polls as "raw" text - like this:

from django.http import HttpResponse
from polls.models import Poll

def home(request):
    content = ''
    for poll in Poll.objects.all():
        content += poll.question

    return HttpResponse(content)

mysite/polls/views.py

Sure enough, that gets our limited unit tests passing:

$ python manage.py test polls

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
......
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 6 tests in 0.009s

OK
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

Now, this probably seems like a slightly artificial situation - for starters, the two polls' names will just be concatenated together, without even a space or a carriage return. We can't possibly leave the situation like this for real users to see!

But the point of TDD is to be driven by the tests. At each stage, we only write the code that our tests require, because that makes absolutely sure that we have tests for all of our code.

So, rather than anticipate what we might want to put in our HttpResponse, let's go to the FT now to see what to do next.:

python manage.py test fts
======================================================================
ERROR: test_voting_on_a_new_poll (tests.TestPolls)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/fts/tests.py", line 57, in test_voting_on_a_new_poll
    heading = self.browser.find_element_by_tag_name('h1')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 306, in find_element_by_tag_name
    return self.find_element(by=By.TAG_NAME, value=name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 637, in find_element
    {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 153, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 123, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"tag name","selector":"h1"}'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 29.119s

The FT wants an h1 heading tag on the page. Now, again, we could hard-code this into view (maybe starting with content =

Polls

before the for loop), but at this point it seems sensible to start to use Django's template system - that will provide a much more natural way to write web pages.

The Django TestCase lets us check whether a response was rendered using a template, by using a special method response called assertTemplateUsed, so let's use that. In polls/tests.py, add an extra check to our view test:

class HomePageViewTest(TestCase):

    def test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls(self):
        # set up some polls
        poll1 = Poll(question='6 times 7', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll1.save()
        poll2 = Poll(question='life, the universe and everything', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll2.save()

        response = self.client.get('/')

        # check we've used the right template
        self.assertTemplateUsed(response, 'home.html')

        # check the poll names appear on the page
        self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
        self.assertIn(poll2.question, response.content)

mysite/polls/tests.py

Testing python manage.py test polls:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 94, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    self.assertTemplateUsed(response, 'home.html')
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/test/testcases.py", line 510, in assertTemplateUsed
    self.fail(msg_prefix + "No templates used to render the response")
AssertionError: No templates used to render the response
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 6 tests in 0.009s

So let's now create our template. Templates usually live in a subfolder of each app:

mkdir polls/templates
touch polls/templates/home.html

That should give us a folder structure like this:

.
|-- database.sqlite
|-- fts
|   |-- fixtures
|   |   `-- admin_user.json
|   |-- __init__.py
|   |-- models.py
|   |-- tests.py
|   `-- views.py
|-- manage.py
|-- mysite
|   |-- __init__.py
|   |-- settings.py
|   |-- urls.py
|   `-- wsgi.py
`-- polls
    |-- admin.py
    |-- __init__.py
    |-- models.py
    |-- templates
    |   `-- home.html
    |-- tests.py
    `-- views.py

Edit home.html with your favourite editor,


  
    
Polls

    {% for poll in polls %}
      
{{ poll.question }}

    {% endfor %}

mysite/polls/templates/home.html

You'll probably recognise this as being essentially standard HTML, intermixed with some special django control codes. These are either surrounded with {% - %}, for flow control - like a for loop in this case, and {{ - }} for printing variables. You can find out more about the Django template language here:

Let's rewrite our code to use this template. For this we can use the Django render function, which takes the request and the name of the template, back in polls/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render
from polls.models import Poll

def home(request):
    return render(request, 'home.html')

mysite/polls/views.py

Our last unit test error was that we weren't using a template - let's see if this fixes it:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 97, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
AssertionError: '6 times 7' not found in '\n  \n    
Polls
\n    \n  \n\n'
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sure does! Unfortunately, we've lost our Poll questions from the response content...

Looking at the template code, you can see that we want to iterate through a variable called polls. The way we pass this into a template is via a dictionary called a context. The Django test client also lets us check on what context objects were used in rendering a response, so we can write a test for that too:

    response = self.client.get('/')

    # check we've used the right template
    self.assertTemplateUsed(response, 'home.html')

    # check we've passed the polls to the template
    polls_in_context = response.context['polls']
    self.assertEquals(list(polls_in_context), [poll1, poll2])

    # check the poll names appear on the page
    self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
    self.assertIn(poll2.question, response.content)

mysite/polls/tests.py

Notice the way we've had to call list on polls_in_context - that's because Django queries return special QuerySet objects, which, although they behave like lists, don't quite compare equal like them.

Now, re-running the tests gives us:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 97, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    polls_in_context = response.context['polls']
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/template/context.py", line 60, in __getitem__
    raise KeyError(key)
KeyError: 'polls'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 6

Essentially, we never passed any 'polls' to our template. Let's add them, but make them empty - again, the idea is to make the minimal change to move the test forwards:

def home(request):
    context = {'polls': []}
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

mysite/polls/views.py

Now the unit tests say:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_root_url_shows_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 98, in test_root_url_shows_all_polls
    self.assertEquals(list(polls_in_context), [poll1, poll2])
AssertionError: Lists differ: [] != [, , ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's fix our code so the tests pass:

from django.shortcuts import render
from polls.models import Poll

def home(request):
    context = {'polls': Poll.objects.all()}
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

mysite/polls/views.py

Ta-da!:

......
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 6 tests in 0.011s

OK

What do the FTs say now?:

python manage.py test fts
======================================================================
ERROR: test_voting_on_a_new_poll (tests.TestPolls)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/fts/tests.py", line 62, in test_voting_on_a_new_poll
    self.browser.find_element_by_link_text('How awesome is Test-Driven Development?').click()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 234, in find_element_by_link_text
    return self.find_element(by=By.LINK_TEXT, value=link_text)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 637, in find_element
    {'using': by, 'value': value})['value']
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/webdriver.py", line 153, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/remote/errorhandler.py", line 123, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"link text","selector":"How awesome is Test-Driven Development?"}'
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Testing philosophy: what to test in templates

Ah - although our page may contain the name of our Poll, it's not yet a link we can click. The way we'd fix this is in the home.html template, by adding an .

So is this something we write a unit test for as well? Some people would tend to say that this is one unit test too many... Since this is a guide to rigorous TDD, I'm going to say we probably should in this case.

On the other hand, if we write a unit test for every single last bit of html that we want to write, every last presentational detail, then making tiny tweaks to the UI is going to be really burdensome.

At this point, a couple of rules of thumb are useful:

  • In unit tests, Don't test constants
  • In functional tests, Test functionality, not presentation

The first rule works out like this - if we have some code that says:

wibble = 3

There's no point in writing a test that says:

self.assertEquals(wibble, 3)

Tests are meant to check how our code behaves, not just to repeat every line of it.

The second rule is a related rule, but it's more about how users interact with your software. We want our functional tests to check that the software allows the user to accomplish certain tasks. So, we need to check that each screen contains elements that can guide the user towards the choices they need to make (the link text), and also that they function in a way that moves the user towards their goal (our link, when clicked, will take the user to the right page).

What we definitely don't need to test in our FTs are things like - what specific colour are the links (although the fact that they are a different colour to something else may be relevant). We don't need to check the particular font they use. We don't need to check whether they are displayed in a ul or in a table - although we may want to check that they are displayed in the correct order.

So, where does that leave us? The FT currently checks the functionality of the site - it checks the link has the correct text, and later it checks that clicking the link takes us to the right place.

So, what about unit testing the templates? Well, most of what's in a template is just a constant - we don't want to have to rewrite our unit tests just because we want to correct a typo in a bit of blurb... The parts of a template that aren't "just a constant" are the bits inside {{ }} or {%  %} - bits that manipulate some of the context variables we pass into the render call.

So, in our unit tests, we need to check that the variables we pass in end up being used - that's why we have the assertIn checks on the response.content as well as the assertEqual test on the response.context.

So, what about checking that our template contains the correct hyperlinks, href="/poll/01/, or whatever they may be? Well, if we were to hard-code them into the template, then that would be a bit like testing a constant. But we're not going to hard-code them, because that would violate the programming DRY principle - "Don't Repeat Yourself".

If we were to hard-code the URLs for links to individual polls, it would be really tedious if we wanted to come back and change them later - say from /poll/1/ to /poll_detail/01/ or whatever it may be. Django provides a single place to define urls, in urls.py, and it then provides helper tools for retrieving them in other places - a function called reverse, and a template tag called {% url %}. So we'll use the template tag, which avoids hard-coding the URL in the template, but it also means that the hyperlink is no longer a constant, so we need to test it.

Phew, that was long winded! Anyway, the upshot is, more tests - but also, we get to learn about Django url helper functions, so it's win-win-win :-)

Let's use the reverse function in our tests. Its first argument is the name of the view that handles the url, and we can also specify some arguments. We'll be making a view for seeing an individual Poll object, so we'll probably find the poll using its id. Here's what that translates to in polls/tests.py:

from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse

class HomePageViewTest(TestCase):

    def test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls(self):
        # set up some polls
        poll1 = Poll(question='6 times 7', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll1.save()
        poll2 = Poll(question='life, the universe and everything', pub_date=timezone.now())
        poll2.save()

        response = self.client.get('/')

        # check we've used the right template
        self.assertTemplateUsed(response, 'home.html')

        # check we've passed the polls to the template
        polls_in_context = response.context['polls']
        self.assertEquals(list(polls_in_context), [poll1, poll2])

        # check the poll names appear on the page
        self.assertIn(poll1.question, response.content)
        self.assertIn(poll2.question, response.content)

        # check the page also contains the urls to individual polls pages
        poll1_url = reverse('polls.views.poll', args=[poll1.id,])
        self.assertIn(poll1_url, response.content)
        poll2_url = reverse('polls.views.poll', args=[poll2.id,])
        self.assertIn(poll2_url, response.content)

mysite/polls/tests.py

Note I've also changed the name of the test, from test_root_url_shows_all_polls to test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls, which is more descriptive of what we're doing now.

Running this (python manage.py test polls) gives:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
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Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 107, in test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls
    poll1_url = reverse('mysite.polls.views.poll', kwargs=dict(poll_id=poll1.id))
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 391, in reverse
    *args, **kwargs)))
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 337, in reverse
    "arguments '%s' not found." % (lookup_view_s, args, kwargs))
NoReverseMatch: Reverse for 'polls.views.poll' with arguments '(1,)' and keyword arguments '{}' not found.

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So, the reverse function can't find a url or a view to match our request - let's add placeholders for them:

Capturing parameters from URLs

In mysite/urls.py:

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$', 'polls.views.home'),
    url(r'^poll/(\d+)/$', 'polls.views.poll'),
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)

mysite/mysite/urls.py

Our new line defines a set of urls that start with poll/, then a number made up of one or more digits - the matching group (\d+). When a url has a matching group, the captured contents are passed to the view as arguments. So, if you look back at what the unit test was last complaining about, we should have fixed its problem: we've now created a url that references 'polls.views.poll' and which is capable of taking an argument of 1.

So now our unit tests give a different error:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 108, in test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls
    self.assertIn(poll1_url, response.content)
AssertionError: '/poll/1/' not found in '\n  \n    
Polls
\n    \n      6 times 7\n    \n      life, the universe and everything\n    \n  \n\n'
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The templates don't include the hyperlinks yet. Let's add them:


  
    
Polls

    {% for poll in polls %}
      
 href="{% url polls.views.poll poll.id %}">{{ poll.question }}

    {% endfor %}

mysite/polls/templates/home.html

Notice the call to {% url %}, which works almost exactly like reverse. Are our unit tests any happier?:

======================================================================
ERROR: test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls (polls.tests.HomePageViewTest)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/harry/workspace/mysite/polls/tests.py", line 99, in test_root_url_shows_links_to_all_polls
    response = client.get('/')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/test/client.py", line 439, in get
    response = super(Client, self).get(path, data=data, **extra)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/test/client.py", line 244, in get
    return self.request(**r)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response
    response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
  File "/home/harry/workspace/mysite/polls/views.py", line 7, in home
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/shortcuts/__init__.py", line 44, in render
    return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs),
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 176, in render_to_string
    return t.render(context_instance)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py", line 140, in render
    return self._render(context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/test/utils.py", line 62, in instrumented_test_render
    return self.nodelist.render(context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py", line 823, in render
    bit = self.render_node(node, context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/debug.py", line 74, in render_node
    return node.render(context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 185, in render
    nodelist.append(node.render(context))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/defaulttags.py", line 411, in render
    url = reverse(view_name, args=args, kwargs=kwargs, current_app=context.current_app)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 476, in reverse
    return iri_to_uri(resolver._reverse_with_prefix(view, prefix, *args, **kwargs))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 363, in _reverse_with_prefix
    possibilities = self.reverse_dict.getlist(lookup_view)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 276, in reverse_dict
    self._populate()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 265, in _populate
    lookups.appendlist(pattern.callback, (bits, p_pattern, pattern.default_args))
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 216, in callback
    self._callback = get_callable(self._callback_str)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/utils/functional.py", line 27, in wrapper
    result = func(*args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 101, in get_callable
    (lookup_view, mod_name))
ViewDoesNotExist: Could not import polls.views.poll. View does not exist in module polls.views.

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Phew. A long traceback, but basically all it's saying is that we need at least a placeholder for our new "poll" view in mysite/views.py. Let's add that now:

def home(request):
    context = {'polls': Poll.objects.all()}
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)


def poll():
    pass

mysite/mysite/views.py

And run the unit tests again:

21:08 ~/workspace/tddjango_site/source/mysite (master)$ python manage.py test polls
Creating test database for alias 'default'...
......
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 6 tests in 0.012s
OK

What about the functional tests?:

NoSuchElementException: Message: u'Unable to locate element: {"method":"tag name","selector":"h1"}'

Well, they get past the main page, but they fall over when they try to look at an individual poll. Looks like it's time to start implementing our poll view, which aims to show information about a particular poll... But for this, you'll have to tune in next week!