ASGI applications support

[azmeuk]

Webtest cannot handle async frameworks such as starlette or quart.
There are alternative test clients out there: starlette and quart provide their own, and there are a few unmaintained libraries on Pypi too. However none of those libs have feature parity with webtest, among other thing I miss the handy form management.

There is a project called webtest-asgi that brings some compatibility, but it is not really asynchronous. This is mostly a synchronous compatibility layer for Webtest and ASGI applications.
While this could be OK as a first step for migration, this is too bad to not benefit from the asynchronicity when the test suite is actually i/o bound.

• Is async web frameworks support something that could be implemented in Webtest?
• If yes, would a PR be welcome?
• If yes, is there any implementation advice/direction to take?

[gawel]

Hi, webtest is higly based on webob. And I dont think webob plan to support asgi anytime soon.

This means that it will be hard to fully support asgi.

Maybe a hack can be done around here https://github.com/Pylons/webtest/blob/main/webtest/app.py#L623 and/or here https://github.com/Pylons/webtest/blob/main/webtest/app.py#L623

For a POC i'd suggest to only try to have an awaitable req.get_response. You can try that whitout webtest:

req = webob.Request.blank('/')
resp = await req.get_response(your_asgi_app)

If you manage to get this works then we'll think about going further.

Regards (and good luck! this can be very cool)