html-form-to-dict 2021.11.4

Parse HTML to a Python Dictionary

HTML Form to Dict

This is a tiny library which provides a method called html_form_to_dict().

This method takes a string containing HTML and returns a dictionary of the value of the first form.

You can use it in tests like this:

def test_foo(client):
    url = reverse('foo')
    response = client.get(url)
    data = html_form_to_dict(response.content) # <====================
    assert data == {'city': 'Chemnitz', 'name': 'Mr. X'}
    data['name']='Mrs. Y'
    response = client.post(url, data)
    assert resonse.status == 302, response.context['form'].errors

Above code uses pytest-django. See client fixture

The dictionary returned by html_form_to_dict() does not allow adding new keys, which are not in the dictionary yet. This way you get an error if your test sets the value for an input which (due to refactoring) does not exist any more.

Install

pip install html_form_to_dict

Development

You need to upload your ssh-pub-key to github first:

pip install -e git+ssh://[e-mail]/guettli/html_form_to_dict#egg=html_form_to_dict
edit-the-code
pytest
create Pull-Request

Alternatives

• Mechanize This library is like a browser without JS support.
• You could use BeautifulSoup like explained in this Stackoverflow Answer
• Use Playwright for browser based end-to-end tests.