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In our internal angularjs project, one of the services has $http.head() call which I'm trying to test.

For testing, I'm using Fake HTTP backend provided by angular-mocks. Here is the relevant code:

it('handle status code 200', inject(function ($httpBackend, ConnectionService) {
    spyOn(Math, 'random').andReturn(0.1234);

    httpBackend = $httpBackend;
    httpBackend.expectHEAD('ping?rand=1234').respond(200);
    ConnectionService.sendRequest();
    httpBackend.flush();

    expect(ConnectionService.stats.packetsReceived).toEqual(5);

    httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingExpectation();
    httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingRequest();
}));

Running the test results into the following error:

PhantomJS 1.9.7 (Mac OS X) connection service tests sendRequest function handle status code 200 
FAILED  TypeError: 'undefined' is not a function (evaluating 'httpBackend.expectHEAD('ping?rand=1234')')
at /path/to/app/app-connection-service_test.js:66
at d (/path/to/app/bower_components/angular/angular.min.js:35)
at workFn (/path/to/app/bower_components/angular-mocks/angular-mocks.js:2159)

After digging a little bit, I've found the relevant github issue:

which, as far as I understand, means that there really is not expectHEAD() method in angular-mocks - it is documented, but, in reality, it is not yet a part of a stable angular release.

What is the best way to proceed?

Note that I have to stay with angular <= 1.2, since this app needs to run on IE8 (Angular 1.3 is dropping support for IE8).

One of the workarounds I'm thinking about currently is to replace head() with get(). In this case, I can test it with existing expectGET() method. But I'm not sure about the drawbacks.

alecxe
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2 Answers2

5

You could just add in the change yourself: https://github.com/revolunet/angular.js/commit/b2955dd52725241dd9519baa12fe8ca74659004b

It's a one line change in angular-mocks.js on line 1523:

1523: -    angular.forEach(['GET', 'DELETE', 'JSONP'], function(method) {
1523: +    angular.forEach(['GET', 'DELETE', 'JSONP', 'HEAD'], function(method) {

Seeing as you have to stay with a non-current version of Angular anyways, it shouldn't cause too many issues in the future.

Edit: reviewing JoelJeske's answer, he makes a good point - you could easily do this without forking. The one change I would make to his solution, is instead of calling the method directly

$httpBackend.expect('HEAD', 'ping?rand=1234').respond(200);

I would instead create the shortcut method directly:

$httpBackend.expectHEAD = function(url, headers) {
    return $httpBackend.expect('HEAD', url, undefined, headers);
};

And then you can do:

$httpBackend.expectHEAD('ping?rand=1234').respond(200);
dave
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  • Good point that this is an easy change. But, what do you think would be a preferred way to make this change: fork angular-mocks and use the fork? Thank you! – alecxe Sep 25 '14 at 02:10
  • Forking it is probably the easiest way, yeah. – dave Sep 25 '14 at 03:21
  • Decided to accept Joel's answer but award bounty to you. Hope that seems fair to you. Thanks again for the help! – alecxe Oct 02 '14 at 03:17
2

As opposed to forking and editing a library, it would be much better practice to use the underlying method. 

$httpBackend.expect('HEAD', 'ping?rand=1234').respond(200);

The other method you cannot use is just a shortcut method. It is much better and easier to use this method than changing the library.

Joel Jeske
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  • Thank you, worked for me, this is definitely an easier option here. Though I don't quite agree that @dave's answer deserves a downvote - he still tried to help and his approach remains legitimate. – alecxe Oct 01 '14 at 03:41
  • Yea that makes sense, I'm still new relatively new; I removed my down vote – Joel Jeske Oct 01 '14 at 04:09
  • Thank you for removing the downvote. I've accepted yours answer since you were first to propose the easier solution. Awarded bounty to Dave for the extra efforts. Hope that seems fair to you. Thanks again. – alecxe Oct 02 '14 at 03:19