How to test an Express REST API with Passport Google OAuth authentication with mocha?

Question

I'm building an app and as part of it, I have a REST API on Express that I would like to write integration tests for. I'm using "mocha" and "chai-http" to do this and it all works well aside from when I add authentication. So in a test like:

process.env.NODE_ENV = 'development'

let chai = require('chai')
let chaiHttp = require('chai-http')
let should = chai.should()
var server = require('../app.js')
var schemas = require('../schemas')
var Snippet = schemas.Snippet
chai.use(require('chai-passport-strategy'))

chai.use(chaiHttp)

describe('Snippet', () => {
  beforeEach((done) => {
    Snippet.destroy({
      where: {}
    }).then(function () {
      done()
    }).catch(function (e) {
      done(e)
    })
  })
  describe('snippet create', () => {
    it('it should store a snippet ', (done) => {
      let snippet = {
        title: 'Test',
        description: 'Mock description',
        snippet: 'Mock body',
        keywords: 'Test key, words;input',
        type: 'sql',
        rating: 1,
        approved: false
      }
      chai.request(server)
        .post('/api/submitSnippet/')
        .send(snippet)
        .end((err, res) => {
          if (err) console.log(err)
          res.should.have.status(200)
          res.body.should.be.a('object')
          res.body.should.have.property('title')
          res.body.should.have.property('description')
          res.body.should.have.property('snippet')
          res.body.should.have.property('keywords')
          res.body.should.have.property('type')
          res.body.should.have.property('rating')
          res.body.should.have.property('approved')
          res.body.title.should.equal('Test')
          res.body.description.should.equal('Mock description')
          res.body.snippet.should.equal('Mock body')
          res.body.keywords.should.equal(['Test', 'key', 'words', 'input'])
          res.body.type.should.equal('sql')
          res.body.rating.should.equal(1)
          res.body.approved.should.equal(false)
          done()
        })
    })
  })
})

I would get an error because my request won't come from an authenticated session. I am using "passport" with Google OAuth strategy so I can't send a post request to a login page and I can't think of a way to log in or authenticate my requests. (The database operations are Sequelize). How can I test the API operations in the app? Is there a standard approach?

Answer 1

The only solution to the problem I found is to use a mock passport authentication strategy for testing like this one: https://www.npmjs.com/package/passport-mocked And use that instead of your strategy when you are in a testing environment.