This is Part 2 of the series "Modular Isomorphic React JS applications". See Part 1 and Part 3 for more.
Unit testing React Components with Mocha + jsdom
tl;dr: Jest can be replaced with Mocha + jsdom for unit testing headlessly in node/io.js, keeping open the option for future tooling changes. Modularity FTW!
Unit testing React is traditionally done
using Jest which dictates the use of the
Jasmine testing framework, and enforces mocking of all require calls. For such
an unopinionated rendering engine, this is a very opinionated setup, resulting
in issues such as overly-verbose unmocking of requires, and being tied into
Jasmine's limited framework.
The Mocha testing framework is a simple, fast, and async-friendly testing framework with its own test runner built in. We can choose our own Assertion handlers (Chai, better-assert, etc), and mocking frameworks (Sinon, etc).
jsdom provides React the required DOM to render to, implementing a suitable subset of browser's DOM implementations entirely in node/io.js.
With these three tools combined, unit testing react components becomes easier, and with less vendor-lock for future changes (we can swap out jsdom for some other implementation in the future, etc).
Let's do it
tl;dr: Get the completed example
We'll be using these libraries:
- Node.js
- npm
- React - ^0.12.0
- react-tools - to compile JSX to JS
- Mocha - testing framework and runner
- jsdom - headless DOM for React to use in tests
Our code structure will look like this:
├── common
│  └── components # All our react components
└── test
  └── components # Unit tests for components
todo-item.js React component
We previously built the component common/components/todo-item.js in Part 1:
// file: common/components/todo-item.js
var React = require('react');
module.exports = React.createClass({
displayName: 'TodoItem',
getInitialState: function() {
return { done: this.props.done }
},
render: function() {
return (
<label>
<input type="checkbox" defaultChecked={this.state.done} />
{this.props.name}
</label>
);
}
});jsdom
Setting up jsdom ^2.0.0 can be acheived in a couple of lines:
// file: test/setup.js
var jsdom = require('jsdom');
// A super simple DOM ready for React to render into
// Store this DOM and the window in global scope ready for React to access
global.document = jsdom.jsdom('<!doctype html><html><body></body></html>');
global.window = document.parentWindow;We are emulating a browser environment here by setting the global variables
document and window as created by jsdom. This later allows React to render
into the document, and utilize functions existing on window such as
onScroll.
The HTML passed into
jsdom.jsdom(...)
is a very simple document, and can be simplified further to <body></body> if
you wish. I have kept the <!doctype html><html>...</html> tags to future proof
against a time when jsdom can distinguish between HTML5 and older DOM models.
A Mocha Test
tl;dr: Get the completed test file in the example repo at test/component/todo-item.js
Let's begin with scaffolding our tests, to figure out what we are aiming for in terms of test setup and teardown:
// file: test/component/todo-item.js
var assert = require('assert');
describe('Todo-item component', function(){
it('<input> should be of type "checkbox"', function() {
assert(this.inputElement.getAttribute('type') === 'checkbox');
});
});First up, how do we get access to this.inputElement? React provides a nice set
of TestUtils to allow
searching for such an element, the most useful for us being
findRenderedDOMComponentWithTag().
We can do this in one of Mocha's before methods, executed before all the
tests:
// file: test/component/todo-item.js
var assert = require('assert');
describe('Todo-item component', function(){
before('render and locate element', function() {
var renderedComponent = TestUtils.renderIntoDocument(
<TodoItem done={false} name="Write Tutorial"/>
);
// Searching for <input> tag within rendered React component
// Throws an exception if not found
var inputComponent = TestUtils.findRenderedDOMComponentWithTag(
renderedComponent,
'input'
);
this.inputElement = inputComponent.getDOMNode();
});
it( /* [...] */ )
});Now, we have extracted the DOM Node (this.inputElement) from the rendered
React component (renderedComponent) using React's getDOMNode() method.
renderIntoDocument is where jsdom comes in, allowing us to access the document
object as if we were in a browser!
All together now, and we end up with a complete test that can be run with
./node_modules/.bin/mocha --compilers js:babel/register --recursive
(alternatively can be run as npm test in the example repo):
// file: test/component/todo-item.js
var React = require('react/addons'),
assert = require('assert'),
TodoItem = require('../../common/components/todo-item'),
TestUtils = React.addons.TestUtils;
describe('Todo-item component', function(){
before('render and locate element', function() {
var renderedComponent = TestUtils.renderIntoDocument(
<TodoItem done={false} name="Write Tutorial"/>
);
// Searching for <input> tag within rendered React component
// Throws an exception if not found
var inputComponent = TestUtils.findRenderedDOMComponentWithTag(
renderedComponent,
'input'
);
this.inputElement = inputComponent.getDOMNode();
});
it('<input> should be of type "checkbox"', function() {
assert(this.inputElement.getAttribute('type') === 'checkbox');
});
it('<input> should not be checked', function() {
assert(this.inputElement.checked === false);
});
});Results
$ npm test
> [email protected] test /home/teddy/dev/react-mocha-jsdom
> mocha --recursive
Todo-item component
✓ <input> should be of type "checkbox"
1 passing (25ms)