How to stub exported function in ES6?

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How to stub exported function in ES6? – Even if we have a good project plan and a logical concept, we will spend the majority of our time correcting errors abaout javascript and ecmascript-6. Furthermore, our application can run without obvious errors with JavaScript, we must use various ways to ensure that everything is operating properly. In general, there are two types of errors that you’ll encounter while doing something wrong in code: Syntax Errors and Logic Errors. To make bug fixing easier, every JavaScript error is captured with a full stack trace and the specific line of source code marked. To assist you in resolving the JavaScript error, look at the discuss below to fix problem about How to stub exported function in ES6?.

Problem :

I have file foo.js:

export function bar (m) {
  console.log(m);
}

And another file that uses foo.js, cap.js:

import { bar } from 'foo';

export default m => {
  // Some logic that I need to test
  bar(m);
}

I have test.js:

import cap from 'cap'

describe('cap', () => {
  it('should bar', () => {
      cap('some');
  });
});

Somehow I need override implementation of bar(m) in test. Is there any way to do this?

P.S. I use babel, webpack and mocha.

Solution :

Ouch.. I found solution, so I use sinon to stub and import * as foo from 'foo' to get object with all exported functions so I can stub them.

import sinon from 'sinon';
import cap from 'cap';
import * as foo from 'foo';

sinon.stub(foo, 'bar', m => {
    console.log('confirm', m);
});

describe('cap', () => {
  it('should bar', () => {
    cap('some');
  });
});

You can replace/rewrite/stub exports only from within the module itself. (Here’s an explanation)

If you rewrite ‘foo.js’ like this:

var bar = function bar (m) {
  console.log(m);
};

export {bar}

export function stub($stub) {
  bar = $stub;
}

You can then override it in your test like this:

import cap from 'cap'
import {stub} from 'foo'

describe('cap', () => {
  it('should bar', () => {
      stub(() => console.log('stubbed'));
      cap('some'); // will output 'stubbed' in the console instead of 'some'
  });
});

I’ve created a Babel plugin that transforms all the exports automatically so that they can be stubbed: https://github.com/asapach/babel-plugin-rewire-exports

While @Mike solution would work in old versions of sinon, it has been removed since sinon 3.0.0.

Now instead of:

sinon.stub(obj, "meth", fn);

you should do:

stub(obj, 'meth').callsFake(fn)

Example of mocking google oauth api:

import google from 'googleapis';

const oauth2Stub = sinon.stub(); 

sinon.stub(google, 'oauth2').callsFake(oauth2Stub);

oauth2Stub.withArgs('v2').returns({
    tokeninfo: (accessToken, params, callback) => {
        callback(null, { email: 'poo@bar.com' }); // callback with expected result
    }
});

You can use babel-plugin-rewire (npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-rewire)

And then in test.js use the __Rewire__ function on the imported module to replace the function in that module:

// test.js
import sinon from 'sinon'

import cap from 'cap'

describe('cap', () => {
  it('should bar', () => {
    const barStub = sinon.stub().returns(42);
    cap.__Rewire__('bar', barStub); // <-- Magic happens here
    cap('some');
    expect(barStub.calledOnce).to.be.true;
  });
});

Be sure to add rewire to your babel plugins in .babelrc:

// .babelrc
{
  "presets": [
    "es2015"
  ],
  "plugins": [],
  "env": {
    "test": {
      "plugins": [
        "rewire"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Lastly, as you can see the babel-plugin-rewire plugin is only enabled in the test environment, so you should call you test runner with the BABEL_ENV environment variable set to test (which you’re probably doing already):

env BABEL_ENV=test mocha --compilers js:babel-core/register test-example.js

Note: I couldn’t get babel-plugin-rewire-exports to work.

This was definitely a gotcha for me too…

I created a little util to workaround this limitation of sinon. (Available in js too).

// mockable.ts  

If you paste the above snippet into your project you can use it like so

foo.js

import { mockable } from './mockable'

// we now need to wrap the function we wish to mock
export const foo = mockable((x) => {
   console.log(x)
})

main.js

import { foo } from './foo'

export const main = () => {
  foo('asdf') // use as normal
}

test.js

import { foo } from './foo'
import { main } from './main'

// mock the function - optionally pass in your own mock
const mock = foo.mock()

// test the function
main()
console.assert(mock.calledOnceWith('asdf'), 'not called')

// restore the function
stub.restore()

The benefit of this approach is that you don’t have to remember to always import the function in a certain way. import { foo } from './foo' works just as well as import * as foo from './foo'. Automatic imports will likely just work in your IDE.

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