Angular2 unit testing : testing a component's constructor

Question

All is in the title : how can one test what is done in the component\'s constructor ?

For your information, I am using a service that requires a setting

Answer 1

Since OP states "I would like to see if the 2 methods that I call in the constructor are called correctly." I have a better approach.

Write a unit test. You don't need to use the test bed for this. It will slow down your tests a lot. Instantiate your mocks manually. Set your spies on the methods you're interested in and then call the component constructor manually with the stubs you've instantiated and set spies on. Then test if spied methods have been called correctly.

The key is to extend your stubs from the original service classes. jasmine.createSpyObj helps for mocking angular classes like Router.

Answer 2

The simple way to test anything inside constructor function is to create component instance and then test it.

it('should call initializer function in constructor', () => {
  TestBed.createComponent(HomeComponent); // this is the trigger of constructor method
 expect(sideNavService.initialize).toHaveBeenCalled(); // sample jasmine spy based test case
});

One thing to note that, if you want to distinguish between constructor and ngOnInit, then don't call fixture.detectChanges() inside beforeEach(). instead call manually whenever you need.

Answer 3

I would inject a fake service using the DI system, which would mean writing the tests something like this:

describe('your component', () => {
  let fixture: ComponentFixture<YourComponent>;
  let fakeService;
  let dragSubject = new ReplaySubject(1);
  ...

  beforeEach(async(() => {
    fakeService = { 
      drag: dragSubject.asObservable(),
      ... 
    };

    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
      declarations: [YourComponent, ...],
      providers: [
        { provide: DragulaService, useValue: fakeService }, 
        ...
      ],
    });
  }));

  beforeEach(() => {
    fixture = TestBed.createComponent(YourComponent);
    fixture.detectChanges();
  });

  it('should do something when a drag event occurs', () => {
    dragSubject.next({ ... });
    fixture.detectChanges();
    ...
  });
});

This allows you to trigger "drag events" whenever you like by calling .next on the subject, which causes subscribers to the fields on the fake service to get called. You can then make assertions on the outcomes you expect from that.

Note that you do not need to call constructor yourself; this method is invoked when the DI system instantiates your component, i.e. when TestBed.createComponent is called.

I would recommend that you don't spy on the component methods (e.g. this.onDrag) and just make sure that they get called, but rather test that whatever those methods should do as a result happens; this makes the tests more robust to changes in the specific implementation (I wrote a bit about this on my blog: http://blog.jonrshar.pe/2017/Apr/16/async-angular-tests.html).