Getting started testing Adonis apps

Getting started testing Adonis apps

@adonisjs/vow, the standard library built for the framework uses chai under the hood for assertions. We will mainly be testing using assertions. Get started by installing vow

adonis install @adonisjs/vow

The installation adds three files to your project. Add the configuration to the aceProviders array of app.js

const aceProviders = [
  // ...other providers
  '@adonisjs/vow/providers/VowProvider'
]

You can see how testing works by testing example.spec.js

adonis test

Output

  Example
    ✓ make sure 2 + 2 is 4 (2ms)

   PASSED 

  total       : 1
  passed      : 1
  time        : 6ms

Pre-testing checklist: Suites and Traits

Below is the content of the example test file.

'use strict'

const { test } = use('Test/Suite')('Example')

test('make sure 2 + 2 is 4', async ({ assert }) => {
  assert.equal(2 + 2, 4)
})

Notice that we are destructuring the test function from Test/Suite. Since we are testing APIs, we need a JS version of Postman. This is provided by Test/ApiClient, a trait. Traits were implemented to keep the test runner lean, so any desired functionality is required when needed.

Basically, we obtain trait from Suite and require the Test/ApiClient trait. Since some of our routes require authentication, we also require the Auth/Client trait.

const { test, trait } = use("Test/Suite")("Example");

trait("Test/ApiClient");
trait("Auth/Client");

To understand more about Suites and Traits, I suggest you read the docs. The Adonis team did a job explaining Suites and Traits.