Testing Django Admin with Selenium

[Derek]

Python 3.5; Django 1.10.7

I am struggling to get access to the admin pages via Selenium.  

I assume the issue is with the user login not being set properly - I don't want to go via the login page/form every time, so was attempting the session approach.  Below is the code that shows the problem.  The last few lines are attempting to access a known element (appears on any admin page); but the actual page that gets displayed is one you would see if you were not logged in.

Any hints on how to make this work would be appreciated. 

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""

Purpose: Test admin list display

"""

# lib

import os

# third party

from selenium import webdriver

# django

from django.conf import settings

from django.test import LiveServerTestCase

from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model, SESSION_KEY, \

    BACKEND_SESSION_KEY, HASH_SESSION_KEY

from django.contrib.sessions.backends.db import SessionStore

# project

from users.models import CustomUser as User

os.environ['DJANGO_LIVE_TEST_SERVER_ADDRESS'] = 'localhost:8007'

class LoginSeleniumTest(LiveServerTestCase):

    """selenium-based test"""

    def setUp(self):

        # setup browser

        if settings.USE_CHROME:

            self.browser = webdriver.Chrome(settings.CHROME_DRIVER)

        elif settings.USE_FF:

            self.browser = webdriver.Firefox()

        else:

            raise NotImplementedError('Unknown browser for Selenium tests')

        # create user

        self.email = 'f...@test.com'

        user = User(

            is_staff=True, is_active=True, is_superuser=True,

            email=self.email, full_name="Foo Bar", nick_name="Foo")

        user.set_password('foobar')

        user.save()

        super(LoginSeleniumTest, self).setUp()

    def test_login_and_access_admin(self):

        # create fake session with real user

        user = get_user_model().objects.get(email=self.email)

        self.session = SessionStore()

        self.session[SESSION_KEY] = user.pk

        self.session[BACKEND_SESSION_KEY] = 'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend'

        self.session[HASH_SESSION_KEY] = user.get_session_auth_hash()

        self.session.save()

        print("HASH_KEY:\n", self.session[HASH_SESSION_KEY])

        # set cookie based on current page domain

        self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + '/dummy/')

        self.browser.add_cookie(

            {'name': settings.SESSION_COOKIE_NAME,

             'value': self.session.session_key,

             'secure': False,

             'path': '/'}

        )

        # access an admin (password-protected) page

        page_name = '/admin/'

        print("URL:\n", self.live_server_url + page_name)

        self.browser.get(self.live_server_url + page_name)

        print("PAGE:\n", self.browser.page_source)

        # throws a selenium.common.exceptions.NoSuchElementException ...?

        result = self.browser.find_element_by_id('user-tools')