Django Api-Key with unit test

I am trying to implement unit tests to an existing project, the existing project uses Api-Key's to access and authenticate against the Api endpoints.

if I do the following via postman or command line:

curl --location --request GET 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/user_db' \
--header 'Authorization: Api-Key REDACTED' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "username" : "test@testing.local"
}'

This will call the following view function and return the user details with the corresponding oid (json response) without error.

from django.shortcuts import render
from rest_framework_api_key.permissions import HasAPIKey
from rest_framework.permissions import IsAuthenticated
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from user_api.classes.UserController import (
    GetBusinessUser, 
    CreateBusinessUser, 
    UpdateBusinessUser, 
    DeleteBusinesssUser
)
from celery.utils.log import get_task_logger
import environ


logger = get_task_logger(__name__)
env = environ.Env()


class ProcessUserRequest(APIView):
    permission_classes = [HasAPIKey |IsAuthenticated ]
    def get(self, request):
        logger.info("Get Business User Request Received")
        result = GetBusinessUser(request)
        return Response(result["result"], 
                        content_type='application/json charset=utf-8', 
                        status=result["statuscode"]
                

This additionally calls the following shortened function:

def GetBusinessUser(request) -> Dict[str, Union[str, int]]:
    logger.info(f"Processing Get Username Request: {request.data}")
    valid_serializer = ValidateGetBusinessUserFormSerializer(data=request.data)
    valid_serializer.is_valid(raise_exception=True)
    username = valid_serializer.validated_data['username']
    return BusinessUser.objects.filter(username=username).first()

As I wish to make unit test cases to ensure I can validate prior to deployment, I have implemented the following in the modules tests.py file:

from rest_framework.test import APITestCase, APIClient
from rest_framework_api_key.models import APIKey
from user_api.classes.UserController import GetBusinessUser
from django.urls import reverse

# Class Method for GetBusinessUser (truncated)
# try except handling and other user checks removed for stack


class ProcessUserRequestTest(APITestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.client = APIClient()
        # have also tried: self.headers = {'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION': f'Api-Key {self.api_key.key}'}
        self.client.credentials(HTTP_AUTHORIZATION='Api-Key SomeApiKeyValue')
        self.url = reverse('business_user')
        self.valid_payload = {'username': 'test@testing.local'}
        self.invalid_payload = {'param1': '', 'param2': 'value2'}

    def test_get_business_user_request(self):
        # also tried based on above:
        #  response = self.client.get(self.url, **self.headers, format='json')
        response = self.client.get(self.url, data=self.valid_payload, format='json')
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertEqual(response.data, GetBusinessUser(response.data).data)

No matter what I seem to do the following is always returned, so it appears from testing adding authentication headers or using the client.credentials does not work with Authorization: Api-Key somekey as a header?

creating test database for alias 'default'...
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
{'detail': ErrorDetail(string='Authentication credentials were not provided.', code='not_authenticated')}
F
======================================================================
FAIL: test_get_business_user_request (user_api.tests.ProcessUserRequestTestCase)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "../truncated/tests.py", line 19, in in test_get_business_user_request
    self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
    AssertionError: 403 != 200

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.018s

FAILED (failures=1)
Destroying test database for alias 'default'...

Has this been encountered before and is there a workable solution so I can create unit tests?

_, key = APIKey.objects.create_key(name="test")
authorization = f"Api-Key {key}"
response = self.client.put(url, data, HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=authorization, format="json")

from rest_framework.test import APITestCase, APIClient
from rest_framework_api_key.models import APIKey
from user_api.classes.UserController import GetBusinessUser
from django.urls import reverse


class ProcessUserRequestTest(APITestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.client = APIClient()
        self.url = reverse('business_user')
        self.valid_payload = {'username': 'test@testing.local'}
        self.invalid_payload = {'param1': '', 'param2': 'value2'}

    def test_get_business_user_request(self):
         _, key = APIKey.objects.create_key(name="test")
        authorization = f"Api-Key {key}"
        response = self.client.get(self.url, data=self.valid_payload, HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=authorization, format='json')
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 200)
        self.assertEqual(response.data, GetBusinessUser(response.data).data)

force_authenticate(request, user=user)  # to docs
self.client.force_authenticate(user=self.user) # im using like this it works