When wanting to mock external modules with Jest, we can use the jest.mock()
method to auto-mock functions on a module.
We can then manipulate and interrogate the mocked functions on our mocked module as we wish.
For example, consider the following contrived example for mocking the axios module:
import myModuleThatCallsAxios from '../myModule';
import axios from 'axios';
jest.mock('axios');
it('Calls the GET method as expected', async () => {
const expectedResult: string = 'result';
axios.get.mockReturnValueOnce({ data: expectedResult });
const result = await myModuleThatCallsAxios.makeGetRequest();
expect(axios.get).toHaveBeenCalled();
expect(result).toBe(expectedResult);
});
The above will run fine in Jest but will throw a Typescript error:
Property 'mockReturnValueOnce' does not exist on type '(url: string, config?: AxiosRequestConfig | undefined) => AxiosPromise'.
The typedef for axios.get
rightly doesn't include a mockReturnValueOnce
property. We can force Typescript to treat axios.get
as an Object literal by wrapping it as Object(axios.get)
, but:
What is the idiomatic way to mock functions while maintaining type safety?
Add this line of code const mockedAxios = axios as jest.Mocked<typeof axios>
. And then use the mockedAxios to call the mockReturnValueOnce.
With your code, should be done like this:
import myModuleThatCallsAxios from '../myModule';
import axios from 'axios';
jest.mock('axios');
const mockedAxios = axios as jest.Mocked<typeof axios>;
it('Calls the GET method as expected', async () => {
const expectedResult: string = 'result';
mockedAxios.get.mockReturnValueOnce({ data: expectedResult });
const result = await myModuleThatCallsAxios.makeGetRequest();
expect(mockedAxios.get).toHaveBeenCalled();
expect(result).toBe(expectedResult);
});