Why is my Django DRF RequestsClient request failing in tests?

I have a few Django Rest Framework API endpoints I want to test.

They are behind an authenticated page. I'm trying to use the DRF RequestsClient to do that.

My code looks like this:

from rest_framework.test import APITestCase from rest_framework.test import RequestsClient from django.urls import reverse import requests URL_PREFIX="http://testserver" API_TOKEN="tfhgffhgf675h" class APITests(APITestCase): @staticmethod def _get_full_url(url, *args, **kwargs): return URL_PREFIX + reverse(url, *args, **kwargs) def setUp(self): self.client = RequestsClient() def test_stuff(self): url = self._get_full_url("ahs:agena_results-list") # Raw requests library - works fine # Note: Testing shows that the RequestsClient() seems to do some sort of magic to # be able to resolve http://testserver. A raw requests GET request must hit it at # 127.0.0.1, and specify the port response = requests.get("http://127.0.0.1:8000", headers={"Authorization": f"Token {API_TOKEN}"}) # RequestsClient() - doesn't work response = self.client.get(url, headers={"Authorization": f"Token {API_TOKEN}"}) 

My RequestsClient request doesn't work, but my raw requests request works fine.

The exception raised when using the RequestsClient is pretty cryptic:

Internal Server Error: /ahs/api/agena_results/ Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/sql/compiler.py", line 1361, in execute_sql cursor.execute(sql, params) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 67, in execute return self._execute_with_wrappers( File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 80, in _execute_with_wrappers return executor(sql, params, many, context) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 83, in _execute self.db.validate_no_broken_transaction() File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/backends/base/base.py", line 480, in validate_no_broken_transaction raise TransactionManagementError( django.db.transaction.TransactionManagementError: An error occurred in the current transaction. You can't execute queries until the end of the 'atomic' block. During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/core/handlers/exception.py", line 55, in inner response = get_response(request) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 197, in _get_response response = wrapped_callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/views/decorators/csrf.py", line 54, in wrapped_view return view_func(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/viewsets.py", line 125, in view return self.dispatch(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 509, in dispatch response = self.handle_exception(exc) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 469, in handle_exception self.raise_uncaught_exception(exc) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 480, in raise_uncaught_exception raise exc File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 497, in dispatch self.initial(request, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 414, in initial self.perform_authentication(request) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/views.py", line 324, in perform_authentication request.user File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/request.py", line 227, in user self._authenticate() File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/request.py", line 380, in _authenticate user_auth_tuple = authenticator.authenticate(self) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/authentication.py", line 196, in authenticate return self.authenticate_credentials(token) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/rest_framework/authentication.py", line 201, in authenticate_credentials token = model.objects.select_related('user').get(key=key) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 492, in get num = len(clone) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 302, in __len__ self._fetch_all() File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 1507, in _fetch_all self._result_cache = list(self._iterable_class(self)) File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 57, in __iter__ results = compiler.execute_sql( File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/django/db/models/sql/compiler.py", line 1364, in execute_sql cursor.close() File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 83, in close while self.nextset(): File "/usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 137, in nextset nr = db.next_result() MySQLdb._exceptions.OperationalError: (2006, '') . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 1 test in 30.774s 

The strange thing is that if I remove the Authorization header from the RequestsClient request, it doesn't crash, but does return a 403, so that doesn't help me.

I also tried setting the Authorization header on the RequestsClient this way, but that didn't help either:

self.client.headers.update({'Authorization': f'Token {API_TOKEN}'}) 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?