Confused by angular unit test

Question

I'm testing out on of my controllers. I keep getting

    Error: Expected POST /auth/signup with different data
EXPECTED: {"username":"justin","firstName":"Justin","lastName":"Young","email":"[email protected]","company":"5579d602ba9f26a414be5d57","url":"http://www.me.com","referrer":"[email protected]"}

It's completing the post to auth/signup as expected, but the data is empty? I'm passing in sampleUserResponse into the expectations so I don't get why it's not passing that data back as the response. What am I doing wrong?

My test:

'use strict';

(function() {
// Authentication controller Spec
describe('AdminItemController', function() {
    // Initialize global variables
    var controller,
        scope,
        $httpBackend,
        $stateParams,
        $location;

    beforeEach(function() {
        jasmine.addMatchers({
            toEqualData: function(util, customEqualityTesters) {
                return {
                    compare: function(actual, expected) {
                        return {
                            pass: angular.equals(actual, expected)
                        };
                    }
                };
            }
        });
    });

    // Load the main application module
    beforeEach(module(ApplicationConfiguration.applicationModuleName));

    // The injector ignores leading and trailing underscores here (i.e. _$httpBackend_).
    // This allows us to inject a service but then attach it to a variable
    // with the same name as the service.
    beforeEach(inject(function($controller, $rootScope, _$location_, _$stateParams_, _$httpBackend_) {
        // Set a new global scope
        scope = $rootScope.$new();
        // Point global variables to injected services
        $stateParams = _$stateParams_;
        $httpBackend = _$httpBackend_;
        $location = _$location_;
        // Initialize the Authentication controller
        controller = $controller('AdminItemController', {
            $scope: scope,
            $stateParams:$stateParams
        });

        $httpBackend.when('GET', 'modules/core/views/home.client.view.html').respond({});
    }));

    it('$scope.create() with valid form data should send a POST request with the form input values and then locate to new object URL', inject(function(Users) {
        // Create a sample article object
        var sampleUserPostData = new Users({
            username: 'justin',
            firstName:'Justin',
            lastName:'Young',
            email:'[email protected]',
            company:'5579d602ba9f26a414be5d57',
            url:'http://www.me.com',
            referrer:'[email protected]'
        });

        // Create a sample User response
        var sampleUserResponse = new Users({
            _id:'4579d602ba9f26a414be5d59',
            username: 'justin',
            firstName:'Justin',
            lastName:'Young',
            email:'[email protected]',
            company:'5579d602ba9f26a414be5d57',
            url:'http://www.me.com',
            referrer:'[email protected]'
        });

        // Fixture mock form input values
        //scope.title = 'An User about MEAN';
        //scope.content = 'MEAN rocks!';

        // Set POST response
        $httpBackend.expectPOST('/auth/signup', sampleUserPostData).respond(sampleUserResponse);

        // Run controller functionality
        scope.addPost();
        $httpBackend.flush();

        // Test form inputs are reset
        //expect(scope.title).toEqual('');
        //expect(scope.content).toEqual('');

        // Test URL redirection after the User was created
        //expect($location.path()).toBe('/admin/users/' + sampleUserResponse._id);
    }));

});
  }());

My Simplified Controller:

.controller('AdminItemController', ['$scope', '$http', '$location','apiResource','$stateParams', '$state','$log',
function($scope, $http, $location, apiResource, $stateParams, $state, $log) {

    $scope.addPost = function() {

        apiResource.save({api_resource:'auth', api_action: 'signup'},$scope.item).$promise.then(function(response){
          $scope.$parent.users.push($scope.item);
      });
    };
}
])

Answer 1

The problem is in your controller, the params you send with the POST is $scope.item but in your test, you DO NOT set your $scope.item to be anything. Therefore, a POST with undefined params will be sent (because $scope.item is undefined). Moreover, in your test, you expect the params sent to equal to sampleUserPostData. Apparently it will fail because undefined !== sampleUserPostData. What you can do is just to set the scope.item = sampleUserPostData; before expectPOST and it will be fine.

Working fiddle.