Question

I am using Mock and I am not able to patch django’s render_to_response function properly. For e.g., the following test never fails:

    from django.test.client import Client
    from mock import patch
    import nose.tools as nt

    @patch('django.shortcuts.render_to_response')
    def test_should_fail(self, render_to_response):
        def assert_response(url, context, context_instance):
            nt.assert_false(True)
        render_to_response.side_effect = assert_response
        response = Client().get('/some/url/')

What am I doing wrong?

Update: The reason I want to do this is that in my view, I am rendering the response like:

form = SomeFormClass(label_suffix='')
return render_to_response('admin/send_info_message.html', {'form': form,}, context_instance=RequestContext(request))

In my test, I want to test that these parameters are correctly called, like:

 def assert_response(url, context, context_instance):
     nt.assert_equal('admin/survey_question.html', url)
     nt.assert_equal({'form': SomeForm()}, context)
     nt.assert_equal(RequestContext(response.request), context_instance)

 render_to_response.side_effect = assert_response

Answer 1

Firstly, why do you want to do this?

Secondly, the place you should patch a function is the place you are calling it – ie in the views module that handles the relevant URL. For example:

@patch('myapp.views.render_to_response')