How to test ajax error callback?

Question

Within an ajax request how can the error callback be tested ? Is it possible to simulate a network connection error ?

    $.ajax({
        url: "myUrl",       
        type: 'post',
        dataType : "json",
        data : ({
            myJson
        }),
        success : function(jsonSaveResponse) {  

        },
        error: function (xhr) {

    } 

    }); 

Answer 1

What I do is just turn my server off before I make the AJAX request, which will simulate the server not responding.

Remember it'll need to be switched back on before you can refresh for changes.

Answer 2

You have to stub the ajax request, and return a custom response that will trigger the error callback. You can do this easily with Javascript testing frameworks such as Jasmine.

Answer 3

If your URL is a PHP page, you can do something like this:

<?php
    header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
    exit();
    //the rest of your code

You can simply comment it out later when you're done testing your error function.