Testing Accounts

For account testing, Joystick takes a simple approach. You have two options: create accounts and delete accounts. Because a test is ephemeral, users for a test should be ephemeral, too. To facilitate this, @joystick.js/test includes two methods for accounts:

• accounts.signup() creates a new user in your test database, returning the login credentials (a login token that the server understands and a token_expires_at timestamp that the server understands).
• accounts.delete() deletes a user in your test database.

The ideal lifecycle for a user is to create a user for the test, run the test, and then delete the user.

Creating Accounts

To create an account, we leverage the test.accounts.signup() method exported from @joystick.js/test:

import test from '@joystick.js/test';

test.that('the user is created as expected', async (assert = {}) => {
  const user = await test.accounts.signup({
    emailAddress: 'example@test.com',
    password: 'password',
    metadata: {
      roles: ['manager'],
    }
  });
  
  const existing_user = await process.databases.mongodb.collection('users').findOne({ emailAddress: 'example@test.com' });

  assert.is(!!existing_user, true);
});

Similar to the accounts.signup() methods in @joystick.js/ui and @joystick.js/node, we call to the method test.accounts.signup() passing an object of options describing our user. We pass an email_address (and/or username), password, and optionally, a metadata object with additional fields to add to the user.

When this method is called, on the server, Joystick will attempt to create the user. First, it will check to see if a user with the email_address (or username) already exists. If one does, it will automatically delete that user and then recreate the user with the new input you've provided. This ensures that multiple tests can create the same user without having to worry about collisions.

Once created, the server will respond with an object containing a token and token_expires_at field. The former representing a login token for the user and the latter it's expiration date. This object can be passed to other test methods like test.render() and test.routes.<http_method> to simulate a logged-in user.

Deleting Accounts

import test from '@joystick.js/test';

test.that('the user is deleted as expected', async (assert = {}) => {
  const user = await test.accounts.signup({
    emailAddress: 'example@test.com',
    password: 'password',
    metadata: {
      roles: ['manager'],
    }
  });

  await test.accounts.delete(user?._id);
  
  const existing_user = await process.databases.mongodb.collection('users').findOne({ emailAddress: 'example@test.com' });

  assert.is(!existing_user, true);
});

While Joystick will automatically attempt to clean up users with an identical email address when running test.accounts.signup(), it's wise to manually write the code to clean up test users so the behavior is clear in your code. To do it, we can use the test.accounts.delete() method, passing the _id (if we're using MongoDB) or user_id (if we're using PostgreSQL) field from the object returned by test.accounts.signup().

When this method runs, the specified user will automatically be deleted from your test database.

API Reference

test.accounts.signup()

Function API

test.accounts.signup(options: object) => Promise;

Arguments

test.accounts.delete()

Function API

test.accounts.delete(user_id: string) => Promise;

Arguments