Django unit tests: How to populate request.raw_post_data

If you are creating unit tests with Django, you might need to send raw data with the Client object. In the example below, we are testing how our view reacts to a raw POST string sent by another API. The string in question is myrawpoststring.

All you need to do is set the data attribute to your string, then set the content_type attribute to application/octet-stream. The default content type, multipart/form-data, expects a dictionary. Any other value will accept raw strings, including made-up content types. Semantically, the application/octet-stream content type is the correct one to use.

class MyTestCase(TestCase):
    # ...

    def test_partial_refund(self):
        # Send a request to /api/sync/23/ with a raw POST string
        response = self.client.post('/api/sync/23/', data='myrawpoststring', content_type='application/octet-stream')

The .put(), .patch() and .delete() equivalents already set the content_type to ‘application/octet-stream’ by default, so you will only need to specify a string.

In your view, you will now be able to access your string in the request object:

def my_simple_view(self, request):
    post = request.raw_post_data  # post will equal 'myrawpoststring'
    # ...