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I am trying to test my update method on my viewset. The viewset is a modelviewset taken from drf. To update i would need to send a put request. As this is not always supported there are 2 ways to tell the server i am making a put request, the first which does not fit my needs is to use an additional field to form called _method and set it to put. As i need to post json data i need to use the second way, which uses the X-HTTP-Method-Override header.

To post my data in the testcase i use the following code:

header = {'X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE': 'PUT'}
response = client.post('/model/1/', content_type='application/json', data=post_data_clean, **header)

But unfortunately the result I get is {'detail':'Method POST not allowed.'}. I tested the behavior of the server using a addon (Postman) where i specified the X-HTTP-Method-Override header too. No exception is raised. I need to know now how to correctly pass the header to the django test client, otherwise testing will get really annoying over here.

Iwan1993
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2 Answers2

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You need to specify header as 'HTTP_X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE' instead of 'X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE' i.e. add HTTP_ at the beginning of the header.

header = {'HTTP_X_HTTP_METHOD_OVERRIDE': 'PUT'}
response = client.post('/model/1/', content_type='application/json', data=post_data_clean, **header)

From the Django documentation:

HTTP headers in the request are converted to META keys by converting all characters to uppercase, replacing any hyphens with underscores and adding an HTTP_ prefix to the name. So, for example, a header called X-Bender would be mapped to the META key HTTP_X_BENDER.

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Rahul Gupta
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    Why the eff is this so hard to find in the documentation!? – KeatsKelleher Nov 12 '20 at 01:51
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    @KeatsKelleher - Bigger question is why is this what the behavior is? Anyways, I had basically the same issue trying to use a cookie in my test - to pass a cookie, I needed to do `header = {'HTTP_COOKIE': 'position=44.4444,-77.7777'}` – ArtOfWarfare Feb 23 '21 at 23:04
  • @ArtOfWarfare it turns out the behavior of the test client is documented (or hinted at, rather), https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/topics/testing/tools/#making-requests – miraculixx Sep 28 '22 at 22:48
  • @miraculixx - Not really... it mentions `HTTP_HOST` and `HTTP_ACCEPT` but other than that all it does is say that names follow the CGI convention. It doesn't elaborate on what that is, but it does include a link to some CGI docs which start of by saying the docs aren't maintained and that the links are broken. – ArtOfWarfare Oct 02 '22 at 03:25
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Also, you can pass headers to the constructor of the Client:

from django.test import Client

client = Client(HTTP_USER_AGENT="Mozilla/5.0 ...", HTTP_X_USER_ID="982734")

This way every request will contain default headers.

PS: This approach is valid for DRF TestApiClient and ApiRequestFactory.

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