SailsJS: How to properly unit test controllers?

sails.js, unit-testing

Solution

UPDATE

Thinking further about the application architecture, it wasn't so much that I needed to test the request/response of the Sails.js controller -- in the context of this application, the controllers are very dumb in that they just pass through JSON objects. So, what I really needed to test was that my service was translating the external API's object to my application's internal DTO that will be used as a JSON return. In other words, it's more important for me to test the actual translation versus ensuring the controller passes it through, which we can safely assume will always be the case.

That being said, I switched my unit testing suite over from Jasmine to Chad's suggested combination of Mocha, Chai, and Sinon. The async hooks just look much cleaner in Mocha, imo. One added library that I used was Nock, a library designed to mock HTTP requests so I can intercept my service class' call to the API and return a stubbed object.

So, to recap, I ditched unit testing the controller, since it's superfluous for my use case. The important functionality I needed to test was the translation of an external API's object to my internal application's equivalent DTO.

Unit test below for the actual service. Note that this particular test didn't have a need for Sinon for stubbing/mocking as Nock took care of that for me:

var Sails = require('sails');
var sinon = require('sinon'); // Mocking/stubbing/spying
var assert = require('chai').assert; // Assertions
var nock = require('nock'); // HTTP Request Mocking
var constants = require('../constants/externalSystemsConstants');
var Battlefield4Service = require('./battlefield4Service');

describe('External Services', function () {

    // create a variable to hold the instantiated sails server
    var app, battlefield4Service;

    // Global before hook
    before(function (done) {

        // Lift Sails and start the server
        Sails.lift({

            log: {
                level: 'error'
            }

        }, function (err, sails) {
            app = sails;
            done(err, sails);
        });
    });

    // Global after hook
    after(function (done) {
        app.lower(done);
    });

    describe('Battlefield 4 Service', function () {
        var userName, platform, kills, skill, deaths, killAssists, shotsHit, shotsFired;

        before(function () {

            // Mock data points
            userName = 'dummyUser';
            platform = 'ps3';
            kills = 200;
            skill = 300;
            deaths = 220;
            killAssists = 300;
            shotsHit = 2346;
            shotsFired = 7800;

            var mockReturnJson = {
                player: {
                    name: userName,
                    plat: platform
                },
                stats: {
                    kills: kills,
                    skill: skill,
                    deaths: deaths,
                    killAssists: killAssists,
                    shotsHit: shotsHit,
                    shotsFired: shotsFired
                }
            };

            // Mock response from BF4 API
            battlefield4Service = nock('http://' + constants.BF4_SERVICE_URI_HOST)
                .get(constants.BF4_SERVICE_URI_PATH.replace('[platform]', platform).replace('[name]', userName))
                .reply(200, mockReturnJson);
        });

        it('Should translate BF4 API data to FPSStatsDTO', function (done) {
            var service = new Battlefield4Service();
            service.getPlayerInfo(userName, platform, function (fpsStats) {
                assert(fpsStats !== null);
                assert(fpsStats !== undefined);
                assert(fpsStats.kills === kills, 'kills');
                assert(fpsStats.deaths === deaths, 'deaths');
                assert(fpsStats.killAssists === killAssists, 'deaths')
                assert(fpsStats.kdr === kills / deaths, 'kdr');
                assert(fpsStats.shotsFired === shotsFired, 'shotsFired');
                assert(fpsStats.shotsHit === shotsHit, 'shotsHit');
                assert(fpsStats.shotsAccuracy === shotsHit / shotsFired, 'shotsAccuracy');
                assert(fpsStats.userName === userName, 'userName');
                assert(fpsStats.platform === platform, 'platform');
                done();
            });
        });
    });
});

Problem

Original source