Unit Testing Express Controllers - node.js

Question

I am having trouble unit testing with Express on a number of fronts, seems to be a lack of documentation and general info online about it.
So far I have found out I can test my routes with a library called supertest (https://github.com/visionmedia/superagent), but what if I have broken my routes and controllers up, how can I go about testing my controllers independently of their routes.
here is my test:
describe("Products Controller", function() {
it("should add a new product to the mongo database", function(next) {
var ProductController = require('../../controllers/products');
var Product = require('../../models/product.js');
var req = {
params: {
name: 'Coolest Product Ever',
description: 'A very nice product'
}
};
ProductController.create(req, res);
});
});
req is easy enough to mockup. res not so much, I tried grabbing express.response, hoping I could just inject it but this hasn't worked. Is there a way to simulate the res.send object? Or am I going the wrong way about this?

Answer 1

When you are testing your routes, you don't actually use the inbuilt functions. Say for example, ProductController.create(req, res);
What you basically need to do is, run the server on a port and send a request for each url. As you mentioned supergent, you can follow this code.
describe("Products Controller", function() {
it("should add a new product to the mongo database", function(next) {
const request = require('superagent');
request.post('http://localhost/yourURL/products')
.query({ name: 'Coolest Product Ever', description: 'A very nice product' })
.set('Accept', 'application/json')
.end(function(err, res){
if (err || !res.ok) {
alert('Oh no! error');
} else {
alert('yay got ' + JSON.stringify(res.body));
}
});
});
});
You can refer to superagent request examples here.