Setting HTTP_REFERER header in Django test

Question

I'm working on a Django web application which (amongst other things) needs to handle transaction status info sent using a POST request.

In addition to the HTTP security supported by the payment gateway, my view checks request.META['HTTP_REFERER'] against an entry in settings.py to try to prevent funny business:

if request.META.get('HTTP_REFERER', '') != settings.PAYMENT_URL and not settings.DEBUG:
    return HttpResponseForbidden('Incorrect source URL for updating payment status')

Now I'd like to work out how to test this behaviour.

I can generate a failure easily enough; HTTP_REFERER is (predictably) None with a normal page load:

def test_transaction_status_succeeds(self):
    response = self.client.post(reverse('transaction_status'), { ... })
    self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 403)

How, though, can I fake a successful submission? I've tried setting HTTP_REFERER in extra, e.g. self.client.post(..., extra={'HTTP_REFERER': 'http://foo/bar'}), but this isn't working; the view is apparently still seeing a blank header.

Does the test client even support custom headers? Is there a work-around if not? I'm using Django 1.1, and would prefer not to upgrade just yet if at all possible.

Answer 1

Almost right. It's actually:

def transaction_status_suceeds(self):
    response = self.client.post(reverse('transaction_status'), {}, HTTP_REFERER='http://foo/bar')

I'd missed a ** (scatter operator / keyword argument unpacking operator / whatever) when reading the source of test/client.py; extra ends up being a dictionary of extra keyword arguments to the function itself.