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Javascript – Node.js Unit Testing request.post(…).send is not a function

I am beginning to test the components of my node.js website using chai and mocha, but when I run npm test I get this error:

‘ TypeError: request.post(…).send is not a function’

This is the code in my test.js file:

    const chai = require("chai");
const expect = chai.expect;
const app = require("./app.js");
const express = require("express");
const request = express();

describe("POST /register", () => {
  it("should register a new user and redirect to login page", (done) => {
    const user = {
      email: "[email protected]",
      username: "johndoe",
      password: "password",
      userType: "user"
    };
    request.post("/register")
      .send(user)
      .end((err, res) => {
        expect(res.status).to.equal(302);
        expect(res.header.location).to.equal("/login");
        done();
      });
  });
});

I am new to Node.js so I’m still understanding how unit tests are executed. any help would be a appreciated

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. 0

    request is an Express router object. Rather than sending a request, request.post("/register") registers a path on that router.

    What you actually want to do is send a request. Because Express is for creating servers, not sending requests, you’ll have to use a different library. It seems that your code is trying to use supertest, which is a testing library that does send requests.

    To use supertest instead, first install it with npm i supertest, then change

    const request = express();

    in your code to

    const request = require('supertest');
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  2. 0

    Its likely because request is an instance of express() rather than a request library like supertest.

    To fix this, you can replace request.post("/register") with a request using the supertest library like this:

    const request = require("supertest");
const app = require("./app.js");

describe("POST /register", () => {
  it("should register a new user and redirect to login page", (done) => {
    const user = {
      email: "[email protected]",
      username: "johndoe",
      password: "password",
      userType: "user"
    };
    request(app)
      .post("/register")
      .send(user)
      .end((err, res) => {
        expect(res.status).to.equal(302);
        expect(res.header.location).to.equal("/login");
        done();
      });
  });
});
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