Logging in Unit Tests

This past week I've been working on implementing Amber's success story into 'unit test format.'  We already had a test making sure that a user is added to the database, but we thought that actually logging in was something different.  I had little to no experience with unit tests, and the environment so my first few attempts were spent figuring out how things worked.

Eventually I came across a hidden section in the django tutorial using Clients.  This is perfect for what I was looking for, as I can use the client to 'post' their username and password to the login page.  I created two tests, one for a successful login (correct username and correct password), and one for an unsuccessful login (correct username, incorrect password).  The way I was checking to make sure it was working (for the successful login) is listed below:

1. Create test user (Username = Amber, Password = password)
2. Create client
3. Client posts <Username = Amber, Password = password> at '/login/'
4. Save the response code from the post.
5. Check to make sure that the HTTP response code was equal to 200 (the OK response code).

I did the same process with the incorrect login information, and checked to see if the response code WASN'T equal to 200.  The successful login worked, and the unsuccessful login test failed.

After I spent more time messing around with the tests, I discovered the problem.  After a login attempt, successful or otherwise, the system redirects the user towards the correct page (profile if logged in, and login page if not).  Well the system does a GET request to grab that correct page, and the HTTP request always sends back a 200.  That means no matter what, both tests were always returning a 200.  The HTTP request I was saving was bypassing the POST request and going straight to the GET request.  I am not sure why this is, but it is obviously a problem.  

My next possible solution is to have the client login, then check what view the user is currently on.  For the successful login I will assert that [location] (which is saved along with the HTTP code) is equal to /accounts/profile.  While with the unsuccessful login I will assert that [location] is equal to /login/.

I haven't gotten time to attempt to implement this new strategy, as we were unable to pull our project from our SVN repository on Dijkstra.  I will edit this post once I have implemented it.