How to return a file content from angular's $httpBackend?

Question

I'm trying to setup an e2e test suite in angular, and need to return canned responses using $httpBackend. It would be nice if I could just return a file content, e.g.

  $httpBackend.whenPOST('/phones').respond(function(method, url, data) {
    return getContentOf("/somefile");
  });

I tried to use $http, something along the lines of

  $httpBackend.whenPOST('/phones').respond(function(method, url, data) {
    return $http.get("/responses/phones.js");
  });

but it didn't work, guess angular doesn't support returning promises from $httpBackend ?

One way I could do it is to reference js files with responses on app load, and assign file's content to variables, but it would be much nicer to be able to load data on demand.

Answer 1

Since $httpBackend doesn't work with returned promises, one way you can do this is to get your data synchronously. $http doesn't have a synchronous option out of the box, so you would have to make the call to your file without it, like so:

$httpBackend.whenPOST('/phones').respond(function(method, url, data) {
  var request = new XMLHttpRequest();

  request.open('GET', '/responses/phones.js', false);
  request.send(null);

  return [request.status, request.response, {}];
});