Spying on a constructor using Jasmine

Question

I am using Jasmine to test if certain objects are created and methods are called on them.

I have a jQuery widget that creates flipcounter objects and calls the setValue method on them. The code for flipcounter is here: https://bitbucket.org/cnanney/apple-style-flip-counter/src/13fd00129a41/js/flipcounter.js

The flipcounters are created using:

var myFlipCounter = new flipCounter("counter", {inc: 23, pace: 500});

I want to test that the flipcounters are created and the setValue method is called on them. My problem is that how do I spy on these objects even before they are created? Do I spy on the constructor and return fake objects? Sample code would really help. Thanks for your help! :)

Update:

I've tried spying on the flipCounter like this:

myStub = jasmine.createSpy('myStub');
spyOn(window, 'flipCounter').andReturn(myStub);

//expectation
expect(window.flipCounter).toHaveBeenCalled();

Then testing for the setValue call by flipCounter:

spyOn(myStub, 'setValue');

//expectation
expect(myStub.setValue).toHaveBeenCalled();

the first test for initializing flipCounter is fine, but for testing the setValue call, all I'm getting is a 'setValue() method does not exist' error. Am I doing this the right way? Thanks!

Answer 1

flipCounter is just another function, even if it also happens to construct an object. Hence you can do:

var cSpy = spyOn(window, 'flipCounter');

to obtain a spy on it, and do all sorts of inspections on it or say:

var cSpy = spyOn(window, 'flipCounter').andCallThrough();
var counter = flipCounter('foo', options);
expect(cSpy).wasCalled();

However, this seems overkill. It would be enough to do:

var myFlipCounter = new flipCounter("counter", options);
expect(myFlipCounter).toBeDefined();
expect(myFlipCounter.getValue(foo)).toEqual(bar);