Manually get a CSRF token when testing

Question

I've got a test where I'm checking some authentication behavior. In this test I need to explicitly check CSRF behavior, so I'm using a test client enforce_csrf_checks set to True:

self.csrf_client = Client(enforce_csrf_checks=True)

My question is, what's the simplest way for me to manually get a CSRF token to send with a POST request I'm going to make to that client?

Is the best option to define a custom test view that returns csrf(request), make a request to that view, extract the CSRF token and then use it in the POST request, or is there some easier way I can get a CSRF token to use?

Answer 1

I know this is an old question, but I stumbled across this while searching for a solution and now I wanted to share my solution in case anyone else has a problem with this.

The CSRF token is indeed stored in the cookie after you login and to access it I had to do the following:

self.client = Client(enforce_csrf_checks=True)
self.client.login(username='temporary', password='temporary')
self.client.get("/url_to_the_form/")
csrf_token = self.client.cookies['csrftoken'].value

Answer 2

The CSRF token should be getting sent to the client as a cookie (named "csrftoken"). The client is expected to send that cookie back with further requests. Could your Client copy the cookie to where you need it?