unit testing - How to test Angular2's router.navigate?

Question

I've run into missing <router-outlet> messages in other unit tests, but just to have a nice isolated example, I created an AuthGuard that checks if a user is logged in for certain actions.

This is the code:

canActivate(route: ActivatedRouteSnapshot, state: RouterStateSnapshot) {
    if (!this.authService.isLoggedIn()) {
        this.router.navigate(['/login']);
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

Now I want to write a unit test for this.

This is how I start my test:

beforeEach(() => {
    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
        imports: [
            RouterTestingModule.withRoutes([
                {
                    path: 'login',
                    component: DummyComponent
                }
            ])
        ],
        declarations: [
            DummyComponent
        ],
        providers: [
            AuthGuardService,
            {
                provide: AuthService,
                useClass: MockAuthService
            }
        ]
    });
});

I created a DummyComponent that does nothing. Now my test. Pretend that the service returns false and that it triggers this.router.navigate(['/login']):

it('should not let users pass when not logged in', (): void => {
    expect(authGuardService.canActivate(<any>{}, <any>{})).toBe(false);
});

This will throw an exception with "Cannot find primary outlet to load". Obviously I can use toThrow() instead of toBe(false), but that doesn't seem like a very sensible solution. Since I'm testing a service here, there is no template where I can put the <router-outlet> tag. I could mock the router and make my own navigate function, but then what's the point of RouterTestingModule? Perhaps you even want to check that navigation worked.

Answer 1

I could mock the router and make my own navigate function, but then what's the point of RouterTestingModule? Perhaps you even want to check that navigation worked.

There's no real point. If his is just a unit test for the auth guard, then just mock and spy on the mock to check that it's navigate method was called with the login argument

let router = {
  navigate: jasmine.createSpy('navigate')
}

{ provide: Router, useValue: router }

expect(authGuardService.canActivate(<any>{}, <any>{})).toBe(false);
expect(router.navigate).toHaveBeenCalledWith(['/login']);

This is how unit tests should normally be written. To try to test any actual real navigation, that would probably fall under the umbrella of end-to-end testing.