Actionhero provides test helpers so that you may try your actions and tasks within a headless environment. We do this by including a specHelper initializer which creates a server, testServer when running within the test environment. Via the testServer, you can easily call actions or tasks without making a real request.

We have chosen jest as our test framework which is included as dependencies within all new projects generated with actionhero generate. using jest is not required, but that is how Actionhero itself is tested and what the following example will use.

You also don't need to use specHelper, and you may want to make a real http or websocket request to test something specific. If this is the case, you can check out how Actionhero tests its own servers for examples - you can make real requests to http://localhost in your tests if you would like.

// package.json from a new actionhero project with \`jest\`included
{
  "author": "YOU <YOU@example.com>",
  "name": "my_actionhero_project",
  "description": "my actionhero project",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=8.0.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "actionhero": "^21.0.6",
    "ioredis": "latest",
    "winston": "latest",
    "ws": "latest"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@types/node": "latest",
    "@types/jest": "latest",
    "jest": "latest",
    "prettier": "latest",
    "ts-jest": "latest",
    "ts-node-dev": "latest",
    "typescript": "latest"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "ts-node-dev --transpile-only src/server.ts",
    "start": "node ./dist/server.js",
    "actionhero": "actionhero",
    "test": "jest",
    "pretest": "npm run build && npm run lint",
    "postinstall": "npm run build",
    "build": "tsc --declaration",
    "lint": "prettier --check src/*/** __test__/*/**",
    "pretty": "prettier --write src/*/** __test__/*/**"
  },
  "jest": {
    "testEnvironment": "node",
    "transform": {
      "^.+\\.ts?$": "ts-jest"
    }
  }
}

To run a jest test suite, you invoke the jest binary, ./node_modules/.bin/jest or npx jest. This will tell jest to look in your ./__tests__ folder and run any tests that it can find. There are ways to change the test folder location, only run specific tests, change the reporting format and more which you can learn about on Jest's website. We assume that you have jest installed to your project by listing it in your package.json. If you used Actionhero generate to create your project, this should already be configured for you.

The majority of the time, you'll be testing actions and other methods you have written, so you'll need to "run" an Actionhero server as part of your test suite. Many times you'll want to have Actionhero behave in a slightly unique way while testing (perhaps connect to a special database, don't log, etc). To do this, you can change the behavior of the config files for the test environment. Here is how we tell Actionhero not to write any logs when testing. Note the test-specific configuration overrides the defaults. Jest will automatically set NODE_ENV=test for you.

Actionhero comes with a specHelper to make it easier to test tasks and actions. This specHelper is a special server which can check things without needing to make an HTTP, websocket, etc request. If you need to check the true behavior of a server (perhaps how the router works for an HTTP request), you should make a real HTTP request in your test suite, using something like the request library (example).

Say you had an action that was supposed to respond with a randomNumber, and you wanted to write a test for it.

// from __tests__/actions/randomNumber.ts
import { Process, specHelper } from "actionhero";
import { RandomNumber } from "../../src/actions/randomNumber"; // import the class of the Action being tested

describe("Action: randomNumber", () => {
  const actionhero = new Process();
  beforeAll(async () => await actionhero.start());
  afterAll(async () => await actionhero.stop());

  let firstNumber = null;

  test("generates random numbers", async () => {
    const { randomNumber } = await specHelper.runAction<RandomNumber>(
      "randomNumber"
    );
    expect(randomNumber).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    expect(randomNumber).toBeLessThan(1);
    firstNumber = randomNumber;
  });

  test("is unique / random", async () => {
    const { randomNumber } = await specHelper.runAction<RandomNumber>(
      "randomNumber"
    );
    expect(randomNumber).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    expect(randomNumber).toBeLessThan(1);
    expect(randomNumber).not.toEqual(firstNumber);
  });
});

Note how in the above tests, we pass the class of the action, RandomNumber to the specHelper as well. This will type the response in your tests so you can be sure that the type of the response is as expected.

Similarly, you can also test Tasks. More details on the specHelper methods can be found here. Methods include:

• buildConnection
• findEnqueuedTasks
• getStaticFile
• runAction
• runFullTask
• runTask
• deleteEnqueuedTasks

If you want to see fuller example of how to create an integration test within Actionhero, please check out the tutorial