Test a page with actions#

Problem#

You want pytest to drive a page that posts to a registered action, asserts the redirect, and verifies that a signal fired with the right payload.

Solution#

Use NextClient.post_action for the HTTP round trip and SignalRecorder to capture the signal payload.

Walkthrough#

Set up pytest plus pytest-django and a session fixture that imports every page.py, so the @action registrations are in place before the first request (see Testing).

conftest.py#

from pathlib import Path

import pytest
from next.testing import eager_load_pages

PROJECT_ROOT = Path(__file__).resolve().parent

@pytest.fixture(autouse=True, scope="session")
def _load_pages() -> None:
    eager_load_pages(PROJECT_ROOT / "notes" / "pages")

Write the test.

tests/test_create_flow.py#

from notes.models import Note
from next.forms.signals import action_dispatched
from next.testing.client import NextClient
from next.testing.signals import SignalRecorder

def test_create_flow(db) -> None:
    client = NextClient()

    with SignalRecorder(action_dispatched) as recorder:
        response = client.post_action(
            "create_note",
            {"title": "First", "body": "Hello"},
        )

    assert response.status_code == 302
    assert response["Location"] == "/"

    event = recorder.last_for(action_dispatched)
    assert event.kwargs["action_name"] == "create_note"
    assert event.kwargs["form"].cleaned_data["title"] == "First"

    assert Note.objects.filter(title="First").exists()

NextClient does not enforce CSRF by default, matching Django’s test client, so the POST needs no token.

Test the failure path#

A failing validation re-renders the origin page, so the test names the origin. The origin keyword fills the _next_form_origin field the {% form %} tag emits in the browser.

tests/test_validation_failure.py#

from next.testing.client import NextClient

def test_blank_title_rerenders(db) -> None:
    response = NextClient().post_action("create_note", {"title": ""}, origin="/")
    assert response.status_code == 200
    assert b"This field is required" in response.content

The status code is 200 because the dispatcher resolves the origin path and re-renders that page with the bound form in scope.

A protocol-level test asserts the rejection instead. Without a resolvable origin the invalid branch cannot re-render and answers HTTP 400.

tests/test_validation_failure.py#

def test_blank_title_without_origin_is_rejected(db) -> None:
    response = NextClient().post_action("create_note", {"title": ""})
    assert response.status_code == 400

Render the page without HTTP#

For tests that focus on template output, render the page directly.

tests/test_template.py#

from pathlib import Path

from next.testing.rendering import render_page

def test_template_renders_form() -> None:
    page = Path(__file__).parent.parent / "notes" / "pages" / "page.py"
    html = render_page(page)
    assert "Create" in html

Verification#

Run the suite.

shell#

uv run pytest -k notes

Every test passes. The dispatch ran through the signal, the model row exists, the failure path stayed on the origin page.

Test a page with actions#

Problem#

Solution#

Walkthrough#

Test the failure path#

Render the page without HTTP#

Verification#

See also#