Angular testing async pipe does not trigger the observable

Question

I want to test a component that uses the async pipe. This is my code:

@Component({
  selector: 'test',
  template: `
    <div>{{ number | async }}</div>
  `
})
class AsyncComponent {
  number = Observable.interval(1000).take(3)
}

fdescribe('Async Compnent', () => {
  let component : AsyncComponent;
  let fixture : ComponentFixture<AsyncComponent>;

  beforeEach(
    async(() => {
      TestBed.configureTestingModule({
        declarations: [ AsyncComponent ]
      }).compileComponents();
    })
  );

  beforeEach(() => {
    fixture = TestBed.createComponent(AsyncComponent);
    component = fixture.componentInstance;
    fixture.detectChanges();
  });


  it('should emit values', fakeAsync(() => {

    tick(1000);
    fixture.detectChanges();
    expect(fixture.debugElement.query(By.css('div')).nativeElement.innerHTML).toBe('0');

});

But the test failed. It's seems Angular does not execute to Observable from some reason. What I am missing?

When I'm trying to log the observable with the do operator, I don't see any output in the browser console.

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, you can't use fakeAsync with the async pipe. I would love to be proven wrong, but I experimented for a while and couldn't get anything to work. Instead, use the async utility (which I alias as realAsync to avoid confusion with the async keyword) and await a Promise-wrapped setTimeout instead of using tick.

import { async as realAsync, ComponentFixture, TestBed } from '@angular/core/testing';

import { AsyncComponent } from './async.component';

function setTimeoutPromise(milliseconds: number): Promise<void> {
  return new Promise((resolve) => { 
    setTimeout(resolve, milliseconds);
  });
}

describe('AsyncComponent', () => {
  let component: AsyncComponent;
  let fixture: ComponentFixture<AsyncComponent>;
  let element: HTMLElement;

  beforeEach(realAsync(() => {
    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
      declarations: [ AsyncComponent ]
    })
    .compileComponents();
  }));

  beforeEach(() => {
    fixture = TestBed.createComponent(AsyncComponent);
    component = fixture.componentInstance;
    element = fixture.nativeElement;
    fixture.detectChanges();
  });

  it('should emit values', realAsync(async () => {
    await setTimeoutPromise(1000);
    fixture.detectChanges();
    expect(element.getElementsByTagName('div')[0].innerHTML).toEqual('0');
  }));
});