Unit Test your Express Js API With Jest

How to Unit Test your Express Js API With Jest?

Denisse Avatar

By:

Denisse Abreu
December 11, 2022 8pm ET

Eng/Spa 5-min

# Set Up your Express Js Server # Run your first API test # Test a simple Login route # How to Test the Express Validator?

Hello 👋🏼, This is the third part of my Unit Testing Tutorial. In this occasion, we'll learn how to test an Express Js API. The goal here is to test the request and responses of our API and ensure that it runs smoothly. Our working environment is Express Js, Axios, Express Validator, and Jest for Unit Testing.
Let's start!

Set Up your Express Js Server.

  • We'll start by creating an empty folder and initializing our project there. 
Git Bash

  mkdir express-tutorial
  cd express-tutorial
  npm init -y
  • Once the project has been initialized, install the Express Js library and the Express Validator. 
Git Bash

  npm i express express-validator

Go to the project root, create a routes folder, and inside create routes.js; this file will hold all our routes. Learn more about the express.Router()

Git Bash

  mkdir routes
  cd routes
  touch routes.js
  • Open this file in your favorite editor and copy the following code. 
routes/routes.js
  • Finally, create index.js in the project root and copy the following code. 
index.js

Run your first API test.

Let's get ready to run our first test; install Jest, Axios, and the Nodemon library; all in development mode. Soon, Node will be able to watch for file changes, so in the future, you will not need to install Nodemon. 

Git Bash

  npm i -D jest nodemon axios

Add the scripts to package.json, so we don't have to type the commands constantly. If you want the test to restart on every file change, add --watchAll to Jest. 

package.json
  • Create a __test__ folder in the project root, and inside create index.test.js. 
Git Bash

  mkdir __test__
  cd __test__
  touch index.test.js
  
__test__/index.test.js

Run your server with npm run dev, then on a separate terminal, run the test with npm test; make sure that the status code return from the server is 200 and the data is the Hello World! string.

Test a simple Login route.

Let's build a simple login route to test a POST http request. First, add the following code to routes.js

routes/routes.js
  • Go to index.test.js and test your login route. 
__test__/index.test.js

How to Test the Express Validator?

In the last part of this testing tutorial, we'll use the Express Validator to test the login route. First, go to routes.js and modify the login route. Return status code 400 if the validation fails. 

routes/routes.js

Go to index.test.js and test the Express Validator. When testing APIs, don't forget to check error codes and messages. See you next time! 

__test__/index.test.js