With Supertest, can I create an alternative request with some headers set by default?

Question

I am using Supertest with Mocha to test an API developed with Node JS.

And I want to do a lót of different tests on the API. With almost all of them I have to set Authorization and Content-Type headers again (because the API requires them for this test).

it('Creation without an email address should fail and return error code 50040', function(done) {   request     .post('/mpl/entities')     .set('Authorization', 'Token 1234567890') //set header for this test     .set('Content-Type',  'application/json') //set header for this test     .send({       firstname: "test"     })     .expect('Content-Type', /json/)     .expect(500)     .expect(anErrorCode('50040'))     .end(done); });  it('Creation with a duplicate email address should fail and return error code 50086', function(done) {   request     .post('/mpl/entities')     .set('Authorization', 'Token 1234567890') //<-- again     .set('Content-Type',  'application/json') //<-- again, I'm getting tired     .send({       email: "[email protected]"     })     .expect('Content-Type', /json/)     .expect(500)     .expect(anErrorCode('50086'))     .end(done); }); 

Can I create an alternative request with those headers set by default?

Answer 1

If i remember correctly in superagent one can pass a hash to set

agent.set({key:value,key2:value2}) 

let me know if it doesnt work with supertest.

Answer 2

You could use a common routine to build your "default" headers as an object and pass them to the request:

//# file:config.js  var config = {    baseUrl: "http://localhost:8080",   authorization: { "Authorization":"authvalue" } }  // Content-Type left out because supertest will use Content-Type json when you use the appropriate method  module.exports = config; 

And now in your test.js:

//# file:test.js  var request = require("supertest"); var config = require("./config");  request = request(config.baseUrl+"/api/getTokenValue") //code to get token value from request  var commonHeaders = {    "authorization":tokenValue,   "X-Testing-Value":1,   "X-Common-Header":"value" };  describe("testing", function() {   it.should('present authorization header to server', function(done) {     request.get('/someurl')       .set(commonHeaders)       .set({"X-TestSpecificHeader":"Value"})       .expect(200,done) //if not authorized you'd get 401   });   it.should('do something else', function(done) {     request.get('/someUrl')       .set(commonHeaders)       .expect(200,done)   }); }) 

Also, if you need to have your app get that token value at runtime (most likely) see this article for using a requested token value that is generated for the tests: https://jaketrent.com/post/authenticated-supertest-tests/