Use jasmine to test Express.js

Question

I am learning Node.js and Express framework. I am a big fan of jasmine. So I want to use jasmine whenever I can, however, I can't find a good way testing Express with jasmine. For example, how should I test a route in app.js?

If I have this route in app.js:

app.get('/', function(req, res) {   ... }); 

How can I use jasmine to test it?

Answer 1

Since Jasmine 2 it is very simple to use Jasmine in a Node.js environment. To test express apps with it, I recommend to use Jasmine in combination with supertest.

Here is how such a test looks like:

project/spec/ServerSpec.json

const request = require('supertest'); const app = require('../app');  describe('Server', () => {   describe('REST API v1', () => {     it('returns a JSON payload', (done) => {       request(app)         .get('/rest/service/v1/categories')         .expect(200)         .expect('Content-Type', 'application/json; charset=utf-8')         .end((error) => (error) ? done.fail(error) : done());     });   }); }); 

Some prerequisites:

1. Install Jasmine v2 as dev dependency in your project: npm i -D jasmine@2
2. Install supertest v3 as dev dependency in your project: npm i -D supertest@3
3. Create an initial Jasmine configuration using jasmine init (Note: You need to install Jasmine globally first if you haven't done already to run this command)
4. Create a specification ending on "Spec.js" (like ServerSpec.js)

Here is how a Jasmine configuration looks like:

project/spec/support/jasmine.json

{   "helpers": [     "helpers/**/*.js"   ],   "random": false,   "spec_dir": "spec",   "spec_files": [     "**/*[sS]pec.js"   ],   "stopSpecOnExpectationFailure": false } 

To run your specifications (test suites) simply add this to your npm scripts and execute npm test (or just npm t):

  "scripts": {     "test": "jasmine"   },