⚠️ Use ng-mocks in your unit tests
More details after about this lib. Just keep in mind that it's awesome.

Standard first

I love use standard. Angular makes the choice to use Karma/Jasmine, so I continue to use it.

😇 YES, Jest is also a great challenger and a powerful tool to write and execute your unit tests

Testing your components

There are two things to test with your components.

Template (.html)
Logic (.ts).

Testing template

What can be tested and needed to be tested ?

All Angular directive *ngIf, *ngFor, ...
All inputs @Input()
All outputs @Output()

🤔 Why we need to test *ngIf for example ?

Image in your commit #1 you add *ngIf in your template without tests. Someone commit the #2 and erase by accident the conditional directive. No test cover this regression.

🔥 Use MockRender from ng-mocks to create your component fixture.

import { TestBed } from '@angular/core/testing';
import { YourComponent } from './your-component.component.ts';
import { MockRender } from 'ng-mocks';

describe('YourComponent', () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
      declarations: [YourComponent]
    });
  });

  it('should create', () => {
    const fixture = MockRender(`<your-component></your-component>`);
    expect(fixture.componentInstance).toBeTruthy();
  });

  it('should display description', () => {
    const fixture = MockRender(
      `<your-component [description]="description"></your-component>`,
      { description: 'hello world' }
    );
    fixture.detectChanges();

    const descriptionEl = fixture.debugElement.query(By.css('.description');
    expect(descriptionEl.nativeElement.innerHTML).toEqual('hello world');
  });
});

🚀 To improve performance and to scope your unit test, use MockComponent from ng-mocks

With this method, child components become black box.

import { TestBed } from '@angular/core/testing';
import { YourComponent } from './your-component.component.ts';
import { YourChildComponent } from './your-child-component.component.ts';
import { MockRender, MockComponent } from 'ng-mocks';

describe('YourComponent', () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
      declarations: [YourComponent, MockComponent(YourChildComponent)]
    });
  });

  it('should trigger data', () => {
    let receivedData = null;
    const fixture = MockRender(
        `<my-component (getData)="getData($event)></my-component>`,
        { getData: data => receivedData = data; }
    );
    fixture.detectChanges();

    const triggerDataEl = fixture.debugElement.query(By.css('.trigger-data'));
    const childComponent: YourChildComponent = triggerDataEl.componentInstance;
    childComponent.triggerData.emit('hello world');
    fixture.detectChanges();

    expect(receivedData).toEqual('hello world');
  });
});

In this example, we trigger the output from the child component. And get an output from our component.

Testing logic

In the next post.

I hope this article can helps you in your development. 🐼

No more 💩 angular unit test / #1 Component template

Standard first

Testing your components

Testing template

Testing logic