Javascript Testing with Jasmine
One of the features I like about Jasmine is that the ability to mock objects and do interaction based testing is built into the tool. When testing C# code (with NUnit, MSTest, or even NSpec) you have to pull in another tool to handle mocking.
In Jasmine, mock objects are called spies. Accordingly, there is a built-in function called spyOn, which takes two parameters:
- A reference to the object with the function to be “spied on”
- A string with the name of the function to mock
For example, lets say you have an object called validator with a function called showValidationMessage. You want to test that given a certain set of inputs, the validation message will be displayed. The test might look something like this:
1: describe('validation specs', function() {
2: var validator;
3: var firstName, lastName;
4: beforeEach(function() {
5: validator = new Example.Validator();
6: });
7:
8: describe('when the first or last name are not entered', function() {
9: beforeEach(function() {
10: spyOn(validator, 'showValidationMessage');
11: firstName = 'Homer';
12: lastName = '';
13: validator.validateInputs(firstName, lastName);
14: });
15:
16: it('then the validation message should be displayed', function() {
17: expect(validator.showValidationMessage).toHaveBeenCalled();
18: })
19: });
20: });
On line 10 we use the Jasmine spyOn function to mock the showValidationMessage method on the validator object. Then on line 17 we can use the toHaveBeenCalled Jasmine matcher to verify that the mocked method has been called. If the showValidationMessage method is not called, then this test will fail.
