Unit Test Helpers

In the past, it has been difficult to test portions of your Ember application without loading the entire app as a global. By having your application written using modules (CommonJS, AMD, etc), you are able to require just code that is to be tested without having to pluck the pieces out of your global application.

Ember-QUnit is the default unit testing helper suite for Ember. It can and should be used as a template for other test framework helpers. It uses your application's resolver to find and automatically create test subjects for you using the moduleFor and test helpers.

A test subject is simply an instance of the object that a particular test is making assertions about. Usually test subjects are manually created by the writer of the test.

The unit testing section of this guide will use the Ember-QUnit library, but the concepts and examples should translate easily to other frameworks.

By including Ember-QUnit, you will have access to a number of test helpers.

• moduleFor(fullName [, description [, callbacks]])

• fullName: The full name of the unit, (ie. controller:application, route:index, etc.)

• description: the description of the module

• callbacks: normal QUnit callbacks (beforeEach and afterEach), with addition to needs, which allows you specify the other units the tests will need.

• moduleForComponent(name [, description [, callbacks]])

• name: the short name of the component that you'd use in a template, (ie. x-foo, ic-tabs, etc.)

• description: the description of the module

• callbacks: normal QUnit callbacks (beforeEach and afterEach), with addition to needs, which allows you specify the other units the tests will need.

• moduleForModel(name [, description [, callbacks]])

• name: the short name of the model you'd use in store operations (ie. user, assignmentGroup, etc.)

• description: the description of the module

• callbacks: normal QUnit callbacks (beforeEach and afterEach), with addition to needs, which allows you specify the other units the tests will need.

• test

• Same as QUnit test except it includes the subject function which is used to create the test subject.

• setResolver

• Sets the resolver which will be used to lookup objects from the application container.

In order to unit test your Ember application, you need to let Ember know it is in test mode. To do so, you must call Ember.setupForTesting().

Ember.setupForTesting();

The setupForTesting() function call makes ember turn off its automatic run loop execution. This gives us an ability to control the flow of the run loop ourselves, to a degree. Its default behaviour of resolving all promises and completing all async behaviour are suspended to give you a chance to set up state and make assertions in a known state. In other words, you know that if you run "visit" to get to a particular URL, you can be sure the URL has been visited and that's the only behaviour that has transpired. If we didn't use this mode, our assertions would most likely be executed before the async behaviour had taken place, so our assertion results would be unpredictable.

The Ember resolver plays a huge role when unit testing your application. It provides the lookup functionality based on name, such as route:index or model:post.

If you do not have a custom resolver or are testing a global Ember application, the resolver should be set like this:

Make sure to replace "App" with your application's namespace in the following line

setResolver(Ember.DefaultResolver.create({ namespace: App }))

Otherwise, you would require the custom resolver and pass it to setResolver like this (ES6 example):

import Resolver from './path/to/resolver';
import { setResolver } from 'ember-qunit';
setResolver(Resolver.create());