Spying on jQuery $('...') selector in jasmine

Question

When it comes to spying on jQuery functions (e.g. bind, click, etc) it is easy:

spyOn($.fn, "bind");

The problem is when you want to spy on $('...') and return defined array of elements.

Things tried after reading other related answers on SO:

spyOn($.fn, "init").andReturn(elements); // works, but breaks stuff that uses jQuery selectors in afterEach(), etc
spyOn($.fn, "merge").andReturn(elements); // merge function doesn't seem to exist in jQuery 1.9.1
spyOn($.fn, "val").andReturn(elements); // function never gets called

So how do I do this? Or if the only way is to spy on init function how do I "remove" spy from function when I'm done so afterEach() routing doesn't break.

jQuery version is 1.9.1.

WORKAROUND:

The only way I could make it work so far (ugly):

realDollar = $;
try {
  $ = jasmine.createSpy("dollar").andReturn(elements);
  // test code and asserts go here
} finally {
  $ = realDollar;
}

Answer 1

By spying on the window itself you have access to any window properties. As Jquery is one of these you can easily mock it as below and return the value you require.

spyOn(window, '$').and.returnValue(mockElement);

Or add a callFake with the input if it needs to be dynamic.

Answer 2

Normally, a spy exists for the lifetime of the spec. However, there's nothing special about destroying a spy. You just restore the original function reference and that's that.

Here's a handy little helper function (with a test case) that will clean up your workaround and make it more usable. Call the unspy method in your afterEach to restore the original reference.

function spyOn(obj, methodName) {
    var original = obj[methodName];
    var spy = jasmine.getEnv().spyOn(obj, methodName);
    spy.unspy = function () {
        if (original) {
            obj[methodName] = original;
            original = null;
        }
    };
    return spy;
}

describe("unspy", function () {
    it("removes the spy", function () {
        var mockDiv = document.createElement("div");
        var mockResult = $(mockDiv);

        spyOn(window, "$").and.returnValue(mockResult);
        expect($(document.body).get(0)).toBe(mockDiv);

        $.unspy();

        expect(jasmine.isSpy($)).toEqual(false);
        expect($(document.body).get(0)).toBe(document.body);
    });
});

As an alternative to the above (and for anyone else reading this), you could change the way you're approaching the problem. Instead of spying on the $ function, try extracting the original call to $ to its own method and spying on that instead.

// Original
myObj.doStuff = function () {
    $("#someElement").css("color", "red");
};

// Becomes...
myObj.doStuff = function () {
    this.getElements().css("color", "red");
};

myObj.getElements = function () {
    return $("#someElement");
};

// Test case
it("does stuff", function () {
    spyOn(myObj, "getElements").and.returnValue($(/* mock elements */));
    // ...
});