I am working on developing a REST API using ExpressJS, NodeJS, Mongoose and Mocha.
The thing is that I have an app.coffee file, thats responsible for setting up ExpressJS and connecting to Mongoose. The way I have set this up is that Mongoose is connected first and if that gets through, then, the ExpressJS App is started.
The issue is that when setting up Mocha, I need to make sure that ExpressJS App existing in app.coffee is completely started successfully including all asynchronous code before any testcase is executed.
For that, I have created a test_helper.coffee and placed the following code in it, but, the testcases start their execution even if the code in app.coffee hasn't completed its execution completely which actually makes sense:
before (done) ->
require(__dirname + '/../src/app')
done()
In a nutshell, I want to make sure that the ExpressJS app has fully completed its setup before any testcase is executed.
How I can do that?
I am late to the party, but I found the best way to set up my mocha test suite for an express app is to make my app.js or server.js file export the app object, like this:
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var express = require('express');
require('express-mongoose');
var env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';
var config = require('./config/config')[env];
var models = require('./app/models');
var middleware = require('./app/middleware');
var routes = require('./app/routes');
var app = express();
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || config.port || 3000);
app.set('views', __dirname + '/app/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
// database
mongoose.connect(config.db);
// middleware
middleware(app);
// Application routes
routes(app);
app.listen(app.get('port'));
console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
// export app so we can test it
exports = module.exports = app;
make sure your config file has different environments like development, test, production set up:
var path = require('path');
var rootPath = path.normalize(__dirname + '/..');
module.exports = {
development: {
db: 'mongodb://localhost/my_dev_db',
port: 3000
},
test: {
db: 'mongodb://localhost/my_test_db',
port: 8888
},
production: {
// ...
}
}
then in your test files you can go ahead and require your app, which will connect to the right db and on the right port:
var should = require('chai').should();
var request = require('supertest');
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var app = require('../app');
var agent = request.agent(app);
var User = mongoose.model('User');
// get users
describe('GET /api/users', function() {
it('returns users as JSON', function(done) {
agent
.get('/api/users')
.expect(200)
.expect('Content-Type', /json/)
.end(function(err, res) {
if (err) return done(err);
res.body.should.have.property('users').and.be.instanceof(Array);
done();
});
});
});
And finally, to start up the whole monster you include this in your package.json
(make sure to have nodemon and mocha in your devDependencies):
"scripts": {
"start": "NODE_ENV=development ./node_modules/.bin/nodemon app.js",
"test": "NODE_ENV=test ./node_modules/.bin/mocha --reporter spec test/**.js"
}
Now you can start your test suite with npm test
and your app with npm start
.
Hope it helps! ps: most of the stuff I learned from looking at this amazing example: https://github.com/madhums/node-express-mongoose-demo