How to use a test tornado server handler that authenticates a user via a secure cookie

cookies, python, tornado, unit-testing

Solution

Using mock:

import mock

...

class UserAPITest(AsyncHTTPTestCase):
    def get_app(self):
        self.app = Application([('/', MainHandler)],
                    cookie_secret='asdfasdf')
        return self.app

    def test_user_profile_annoymous(self):
        with mock.patch.object(MainHandler, 'get_secure_cookie') as m:
            m.return_value = 'user_email'
            response = self.fetch('/', method='GET')
        self.assertEqual('sucess', to_unicode(response.body) )

Problem

How can I write a unit test for a tornado handler that authenticates a user via a secure cookie? Here is the code (and sudo code) for a dummy test that I'd like to make pass. I'm using Tornado 3.1. ``` from tornado.web import Application, RequestHandler from tornado.escape import to_unicode, json_decode, json_encode from tornado.testing import AsyncHTTPTestCase class MainHandler(RequestHandler): """ Base handler to authenticate user via a secure cookie. This is used for an API. """ def get(self): user = self.get_secure_cookie('user') if user == 'user_email': self.write('sucess') else: self.write('fail') class UserAPITest(AsyncHTTPTestCase): def get_app(self): self.app = Application([('/', MainHandler)], cookie_secret='asdfasdf') return self.app def test_user_profile_annoymous(self): #SUDO CODE (what should go here?) #cookie = make_secure_cookie('user', 'user_email', cookie_secret) #headers = {'Cookie':cookie} response = self.fetch('/', method='GET', headers=headers) self.assertEqual('sucess', to_unicode(response.body) ) ```

Original source