Mocking my own service in a unit test

Question

I have a service that takes several of my other services as a dependency. How can I mock it out for a unit test?

myApp.factory('serviceToTest',
           ['serviceDependency',
    function(serviceDependency) {
        return function(args) {
            return cond(args) ? serviceDependency() : somethingElse();
        };
    }
]);

In the above example, I want to mock out serviceDependency so I can verify that it was called. How can I do that?

I could just do the following in the test:

describe("Services", function() {
    describe('serviceToTest', function() {

        myApp.factory('serviceDependency', function() {
            var timesCalled = 0;
            return function() {
                return timesCalled++;
            }
        });

        it('should do foo', inject(function(serviceToTest, serviceDependency) {
            serviceToTest(["foo", "bar", "baz"]);
            expect(serviceDependency()).to.equal(1);
        });
    });
});

This works fine for the test that needs the mock, but it then affects the state of all the other tests that follow, which is obviously a problem.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly you want to test a service that depends on another service and mock a dependency for each test. If so, let's say that we've got a car that has a dependency on an engine:

var app = angular.module('plunker', [])
  .factory('car', function(engine) {
     return {
       drive : function() {
         return 'Driving: ' + engine.speed();
       }
     }
  })
  .value('engine', {
    speed : function() {
      return 'fast';
    }
  });

Then you want to test a car and mock an engine. There are 2 ways of doing so: either by defining a new module in which we could redefine an engine:

describe('Testing a car', function() {
  var testEngine;

  beforeEach(function(){
    testEngine = {};
    angular.module('test', ['plunker']).value('engine', testEngine);
    module('test');
  });   

  it('should drive slow with a slow engine', inject(function(car) {
    testEngine.speed = function() {
      return 'slow';
    };
    expect(car.drive()).toEqual('Driving: slow');
  }));
});

A working plunk here: http://plnkr.co/edit/ueXIzk?p=preview

A bit simpler alternative, relaying on dynamic nature of JavaScript:

describe('Testing a car', function() {
  var testEngine;

  beforeEach(module('plunker'));
  beforeEach(inject(function(engine){
    testEngine = engine;
  }));

  it('should drive slow with a slow engine', inject(function(car) {
    testEngine.speed = function() {
      return 'slow';
    };
    expect(car.drive()).toEqual('Driving: slow');
  }));
});

http://plnkr.co/edit/tlHnsJ?p=preview

Yet another alternative is to use a Jasmine's spy:

describe('Testing a car', function() {
  var testEngine;

  beforeEach(module('plunker'));
  beforeEach(inject(function(engine){
    testEngine = engine;
  }));

  it('should drive slow with a slow engine', inject(function(car) {
    spyOn(testEngine, 'speed').andReturn('slow');
    expect(car.drive()).toEqual('Driving: slow');
  }));
});

http://plnkr.co/edit/K4jczI?p=preview