I'm glad to see use of RequestFactory() instead of the normal django test client, but my personal preference is to also avoid the use of the as_view method, as well, for finer grained testing. The stock django class based views make this a little more difficult, but it can be done. For more details, please see http://tech.novapost.fr/django-unit-test-your-views-en.html and http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2009/08/24/writing-great-unit-tests-best-and-worst-practises/

I recognize that django and most projects in django do not use this style of testing, and I do not consider it a blocker for merging, but I would like to suggest that we move in that direction for testing in the future.