test-requests

Connect middleware to facilitate triggering server-side actions during end-to-end testing. test-requests adds routes to call handler functions which you provide, only when running tests (NODE_ENV === "test" in the server process). This is useful for data initialization (e.g., database cleaning and seeding) in setups where your server is running in a different process than the test code, and also when you want to manipulate cookies/session values in your tests (see examples below).

Installation

Add test-requests to your dev dependencies in package.json:

npm install --save-dev test-requests

Usage

Insert test-requests into your server's middleware stack, before any catch-all routing:

var testRequests = require('test-requests');
 
// initialize app with e.g. Connect or Express
 
app.use(testRequests);
app.use(app.router); // more routing with Express

Register handlers for test routes:

testRequests.registerHandlers({
  clean_db: function() {
    // clean database
  }
});

Make requests to the test server at /_test/[handler] to call handlers:

beforeEach(function() {
  browser().navigateTo("/_test/clean_db");
});

NB: These handlers will never be available at server routes except in the test environment.

If the handler returns a String or Object, this return value will be rendered into the response, as HTML or JSON respectively:

testRequests.registerHandlers({
  create_widget: function() {
    // factory up some data
    return widget; // sent in response body as JSON
  }
});

Request and response objects are also available in the handlers. This could be used to manipulate cookies or session values directly, for instance to create authentication shortcuts for cases that don't need to test your entire authentication flow (similar to the functionality of the rack_session_access Ruby gem):

testRequests.registerHandlers({
  create_admin_user_and_login: function(request, response) {
    request.session.user = createAdminUser();
  }
});

Asynchronous code in handlers

If your handler needs to wait for asynchronous actions to complete before responding, it can use a done() callback given as an optional final argument:

testRequests.registerHandlers({
  create_widgets: function(request, response, done) {
    Widget.bulkCreate(exampleData).success(function() { // callback from sequelize
      console.log("Successfully created widget fixtures");
      done();
    });
  }
});

If no callback is present in the handler's function signature, test-requests will complete the request as soon as the handler returns.

Local development and running tests

Clone repo:

git clone [e-mail]:tdumitrescu/test-requests.git

Install dependencies:

npm install

Run Mocha test script:

npm test

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request