Jasmine 2.1 beforeAll/afterAll methods cause errors

[chesleybrown]

Jasmine has released beforeAll and afterAll methods with 2.1 which allow executing a before function only once for all the following specs. Angular mocks doesn't seem to play nice with this concept.

When using beforeAll or afterAll methods, I encounter the following errors.

TypeError: 'null' is not an object (evaluating 'currentSpec.$modules')
        at workFn (/Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/app/components/angular-mocks/angular-mocks.js:2323)
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/boot.js:71
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/adapter.js:174
        at http://localhost:9876/karma.js:185
        at http://localhost:9876/context.html:168
    TypeError: 'null' is not an object (evaluating 'currentSpec.$modules')
        at workFn (/Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/app/components/angular-mocks/angular-mocks.js:2323)
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/boot.js:71
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/adapter.js:174
        at http://localhost:9876/karma.js:185
        at http://localhost:9876/context.html:168
    Expected { 0: HTMLNode, length: 1, prevObject: { 0: HTMLNode, length: 1 }, context: undefined, selector: '.loading-indicator' } to have class 'ng-hide'.
    Error: Expected { 0: HTMLNode, length: 1, prevObject: { 0: HTMLNode, length: 1 }, context: undefined, selector: '.loading-indicator' } to have class 'ng-hide'.
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/test/directives/about-product.directive.spec.js:40
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/boot.js:71
        at /Users/chesleybrown/Sites/bln-web/node_modules/karma-jasmine/lib/adapter.js:174
        at http://localhost:9876/karma.js:185
        at http://localhost:9876/context.html:168

[chesleybrown]

I posted this bug on Jasmine as well because I wasn't sure which code was in the wrong: jasmine/jasmine#714

They replied with this:

Because a beforeAll runs outside any particular spec context, there probably isn't going to be a currentSpec object that they'll be able to reference.

Closing. It looks like this is probably an issue with angular and/or angular-mocks and not jasmine itself.

[shahata]

@chesleybrown it seems to me that you are trying to do something like:

beforeAll(inject(function ($rootScope) {
}));

If this is the case, then this is the expected behavior since angular needs to create a new injector in each test. I don't think we want to be able to have a single injector for all the tests in a suite. I guess it can be done, but I don't think we should unless you have a good use case for this...

(of course I'm just assuming that this is what you did from looking at the stack trace and it is possible you did something else entirely :D)

[lgalfaso]

After two months and no feedback, I made the assumption that the issue is what @shahata commented. Closing this, but if there is anything else that needs to be handled, then feel free to reopen the issue

[scriby]

The use case I have for using beforeAll looks something like this:

describe('some expensive to create object', function() {
  var object;

  beforeAll(function() {
    object = createExpensiveObject();
  });

  it('has property A', function() {
    expect(object).toHavePropertyA();
  });

  it('has property B', function() {
    expect(object).toHavePropertyB();
  });

  ...
});

I like being able to split up the assertions into more granular chunks instead of just listing them one after another in a single it block.

I think this is still achievable with beforeEach (just initialize object if it's null), it's just not quite so straightforward.

[xml]

So... is the bottom line that Angular doesn't support Jasmine's beforeAll, and developers should avoid it? In my case, I spent an hour chasing unclear errors, only to eventually track down this issue...

[lgalfaso]

It is not possible to use the injector at beforeAll as there is no cross-application nor cross multiple bootstrap injector. If there is some need to make Jasmine work in a different way, I would recommend you to open an issue at the karma-jasmine plugin repo

[timruffles]

@lgalfaso not sure why this would be an Jasmine issue? Jasmine's beforeAll (and mocha's before) works fine, it's the implementation of angular-mocks that stops it working for angular tests.

As @xml said, seems a shame to talk about Jasmine as the most popular framework in the docs, and not support a very core feature for writing good tests in the style @scriby demonstrated.

[lgalfaso]

@timruffles each test must have its own clean $injector. This is the only way to warranty that the right configuration is present for each test. This implies that anything that needs an injector must be executed once per test.
Jasmine beforeAll syntax is very powerful, but given that it runs once for all tests, then it cannot have access to the $injector (and subsequently it cannot be used in conjunction with inject).

Loose comments stating this is a shame do not help. The project karma-jasmine adds some functionality to Jasmine to make it possible for it to be used within karma to test Angular apps. My comment above does not claim that there is a need to change how Jasmine works, it is a great library that works in the expected way. That does not mean that all the functionality provided by Jasmine can be used with the functionality provided by karma-jasmine. One of the limitation is that you do not have access to $injector at beforeAll. If you find a solution to this problem, then open a PR on karma-jasmine and someone will review it.

[timruffles]

@lgalfaso sometimes code is a better way to explain. I'm a GDE so I'd be happy to get started with contribution by productionizing this implementation, rather than just doing talks :)

Here is a repo which demonstrates how it is possible to support this functional changing only ngMock. This demonstrates it's ngMock's jasmine/mocha support that is the limiting factor here.

Rather than tying injector state to currentSpec, a currentContext is created on demand, and cleared on demand.

As you can see, it supports beforeEach/beforeAll and the standard use of injectors.

[lgalfaso]

@timruffles can you make your variation of ngMock work with this simple currently working example

describe('something', function() {
  beforeEach(module(function($interpolateProvider) {
    $interpolateProvider.startSymbol('[[');
    $interpolateProvider.endSymbol(']]');
  }));

  it('should interpolate using [[ ]]', inject(function($interpolate) {
    expect($interpolate('[[foo]]')({foo: 'bar'})).toBe('bar');
  }));
});

describe('something else', function() {
  it('should interpolate using {{ }}', inject(function($interpolate) {
    expect($interpolate('{{foo}}')({foo: 'bar'})).toBe('bar');
  }));
});