Testing custom admin actions in django

Question

I'm new to django and I'm having trouble testing custom actions(e.g actions=['mark_as_read']) that are in the drop down on the app_model_changelist, it's the same dropdown with the standard "delete selected". The custom actions work in the admin view, but I just dont know how to call it in my mock request, I know I need to post data but how to say I want "mark_as_read" action to be done on the data I posted?

I want to reverse the changelist url and post the queryset so the "mark_as_read" action function will process the data I posted.

change_url = urlresolvers.reverse('admin:app_model_changelist')
response = client.post(change_url, <QuerySet>)

Answer 1

Just pass the parameter action with the action name.

response = client.post(change_url, {'action': 'mark_as_read', ...})

Checked items are passed as _selected_action parameter. So code will be like this:

fixtures = [MyModel.objects.create(read=False),
            MyModel.objects.create(read=True)]
should_be_untouched = MyModel.objects.create(read=False)

#note the unicode() call below
data = {'action': 'mark_as_read',
        '_selected_action': [unicode(f.pk) for f in fixtures]}
response = client.post(change_url, data)