Automated tests are essential to the apps we write since modern apps have so many moving parts.

In this piece, we’ll look at how to write apps to test an Express app that interacts with a database with Jest and SuperTest.

---

Creating the App We’ll Test

We create a project folder by creating an empty folder and running the following to create a package.json file with the default answers:

npm init -y

Then we run the following to install the packages for our apps:

npm i express sqlite3 body-parser

Then, we create the app.js file for our app and write:

const express = require('express');  
const sqlite3 = require('sqlite3').verbose();  
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');  
const app = express();  
const port = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test' ? 3001 : 3000;  
let db;  
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test') {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');  
}  
else {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database('db.sqlite');  
}

db.serialize(() => {  
    db.run('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS persons (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, age INTEGER)');  
});

app.use(bodyParser.json());  
app.get('/', (req, res) => {  
    db.serialize(() => {  
        db.all('SELECT * FROM persons', [], (err, rows) => {  
            res.json(rows);  
        });  
    })  
})

app.post('/', (req, res) => {  
    const { name, age } = req.body;  
    db.serialize(() => {  
        const stmt = db.prepare('INSERT INTO persons (name, age) VALUES (?, ?)');  
        stmt.run(name, age);  
        stmt.finalize();  
        res.json(req.body);  
    })  
})

app.put('/:id', (req, res) => {  
    const { name, age } = req.body;  
    const { id } = req.params;  
    db.serialize(() => {  
        const stmt = db.prepare('UPDATE persons SET name = ?, age = ? WHERE id = ?');  
        stmt.run(name, age, id);  
        stmt.finalize();  
        res.json(req.body);  
    })  
})

app.delete('/:id', (req, res) => {  
    const { id } = req.params;  
    db.serialize(() => {  
        const stmt = db.prepare('DELETE FROM persons WHERE id = ?');  
        stmt.run(id);  
        stmt.finalize();  
        res.json(req.body);  
    })  
})

const server = app.listen(port);  
module.exports = { app, server };

The code above has the app we’ll test.

To make our app easier to test, we have:

const port = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test' ? 3001 : 3000;  
let db;  
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test') {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');  
}  
else {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database('db.sqlite');  
}

So we can set the process.env.NODE_ENV to 'test' to make our app listen to a different port than it does when the app is running in a nontest environment.

We’ll use the 'test' environment to run our tests.

Likewise, we want our app to use a different database when running unit tests than when we aren’t running them.

This is why we have:

let db;  
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'test') {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');  
}  
else {  
    db = new sqlite3.Database('db.sqlite');  
}

We specified that when the app is running in a 'test' environment we want to use SQLite’s in-memory database rather than a database file.

---

Writing the Tests

Initialization the code

With the app made to be testable, we can add tests to it.

We’ll use the Jest test runner and SuperTest to make requests to our routes in our tests. To add Jest and SuperTest, we run:

npm i jest supertest

Then, we add app.test.js to the same folder as the app.js file we had above.

In app.test.js, we start by writing the following:

const { app } = require('./app');  
const sqlite3 = require('sqlite3').verbose();  
const request = require('supertest');  
const db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');
beforeAll(() => {  
    process.env.NODE_ENV = 'test';  
})

In the code above, we included our Express app from our app.js. Then we also included the SQLite3 and SuperTest packages.,

Then, we connected to our in-memory database with:

const db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');

Next, we set all the tests to run in the 'test' environment by running:

beforeAll(() => {  
    process.env.NODE_ENV = 'test';  
})

This will make sure we use port 3001 and the in-memory database we specified in app.js for each test.

To make our tests run independently and with consistent results, we have to clean our database and insert fresh data every time.

To do this, we create a function we call on each test:

const seedDb = db => {  
    db.run('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS persons (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, age INTEGER)');  
    db.run('DELETE FROM persons');  
    const stmt = db.prepare('INSERT INTO persons (name, age) VALUES (?, ?)');  
    stmt.run('Jane', 1);  
    stmt.finalize();  
}

The code above creates the persons table if it doesn’t exist and deletes everything from there afterward.

Then we insert a new value in there to have some starting data.

---

Adding Tests

With the initialization code complete, we can write the tests.

GET request test

First, we write a test to get the existing seed data from the database with a GET request.

We do this by writing:

test('get persons', () => {  
    db.serialize(async () => {  
        seedDb(db);  
        const res = await request(app).get('/');  
        const response = [  
            { name: 'Jane', id: 1, age: 1 }  
        ]  
        expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
        expect(res.body).toEqual(response);  
    })  
});

We put everything inside the callback of db.serialize so the queries will be run sequentially.

First, we call seedDb, which we created above to create the table if it doesn’t exist, to clear out the database, and to add new data.

Then, we call the GET request by writing:

await request(app).get('/');

This gets us the res object with the response resolved from the promise.

request(app) will start the Express app so we can make the request.

Next, we have the response for us to check against for correctness:

const response = [  
  { name: 'Jane', id: 1, age: 1 }  
]

Then, we check the responses to see if we get what we expect:

expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
expect(res.body).toEqual(response);

The toBe method checks for shallow equality, and toEqual checks for deep equality. So we use toEqual to check if the whole object structure is the same.

res.status checks the status code returned from the server, and res.body has the response body.

POST request test

Next, we add a test for the POST request. It’s similar to the GET request test.

We write the following code:

test('add person', () => {  
    db.serialize(async () => {  
        seedDb(db);  
        await request(app)  
            .post('/')  
            .send({ name: 'Joe', age: 2 }); 
        const res = await request(app).get('/');  
        const response = [  
            { name: 'Jane', id: 1, age: 1 },  
            { name: 'Joe', id: 2, age: 2 }  
        ]  
        expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
        expect(res.body).toEqual(response);  
    })  
});

First, we reset the database with:

seedDb(db);

We made our POST request with:

await request(app)  
  .post('/')  
  .send({ name: 'Joe', age: 2 });

This will insert a new entry into the in-memory database.

Finally, to check for correctness, we make the GET request — like in our first test — and check if both entries are returned:

const res = await request(app).get('/');  
const response = [  
  { name: 'Jane', id: 1, age: 1 },  
  { name: 'Joe', id: 2, age: 2 }  
]  
expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
expect(res.body).toEqual(response);

PUT and DELETE tests

The test for the PUT request is similar to the POST request. We reset the database, make the PUT request with our payload, and then make the GET request to get the returned data, as follows:

test('update person', () => {  
    db.serialize(async () => {  
        seedDb(db);  
        await request(app)  
            .put('/1')  
            .send({ name: 'Joe', age: 2 }); 
        const res = await request(app).get('/');  
        const response = [  
            { name: 'Jane', id: 1, age: 1 }  
        ]  
        expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
        expect(res.body).toEqual(response);  
    })  
});

Then we can replace the PUT request with the DELETE request and test the DELETE request:

test('delete person', () => {  
    db.serialize(async () => {  
        seedDb(db);  
        const res = await request(app).delete('/1');  
        const response = [];  
        expect(res.status).toBe(200);  
        expect(res.body).toEqual(response);  
    })  
});

---

Running the Tests

To run the tests, we add the following to the scripts section:

"test": "jest --forceExit"

We have to add the --forceExit option so Jest will exist after the tests are run. There’s no fix for the issue where Jest tests using SuperTest don’t exit properly yet.

Then we run the following to run the tests:

npm test

And we should get:

PASS  ./app.test.js  
  √ get persons (11ms)  
  √ add person (2ms)  
  √ update person (2ms)  
  √ delete person (6ms)Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total  
Tests:       4 passed, 4 total  
Snapshots:   0 total  
Time:        2.559s  
Ran all test suites.  
Force exiting Jest: Have you considered using `--detectOpenHandles` to detect async operations that kept running after all tests finished?

We should get the same thing no matter how many times we run the tests since we reset the database and made all database queries run sequentially.

Also, we used a different database and port for our tests than other environments, so the data should be clean.

---

Conclusion

We can add tests run with the Jest test runner. To do this, we have to have a different port and database for running the tests. Then we create the tables if they don’t already exist, clear all the data, and add seed data so we have the same database structure and content for every test.

With SuperTest, we can run the Express app automatically and make the request we want. Then, we can check the output.