Show a friendly error when using TestUtils.Simulate with shallow rendering

[StevenLangbroek]

I'm doing a simple shallow render on a component which has a button (<a>) with an onClick handler. I can correctly assert most of its properties, but I can't get asserting whether the button has been clicked (by using TestUtils.Simulate.click(output.props.children[1]) and a sinon.spy() passed in as handler) to work. TestUtils doesn't throw any Invariant Violation or whatever other error, the spy just never gets called. When I manually call it through this.props.children[1].props.onClick() it works. Is this expected behavior?

[zpao]

I'm not up to date with what the interaction is supposed to be with the shallow renderer these days so cc @spicyj …

But when you use the shallow renderer you aren't working on a real rendered tree. TestUtils.Simulate.click(output.props.children[1]) especially doesn't look like it should work - remember that props are not rendered output. props.children[1] will be a React Element, not a component instance.

So as your test case seems to be written, yes this is expected.

[sophiebits]

That's expected. We should probably give a better error message – changing this issue title to reflect that.

[StevenLangbroek]

Is there anything I can do to help with this? I haven't contributed to React yet, but we're investing heavily into in-company knowledge. If you can point me to where to assert this, I'd love to help.

[StevenLangbroek]

Also, where do I submit PR's for React's website? I could clarify this in the documentation...

[sophiebits]

The docs/ directory has markdown files that turn into the website. Each page should also have an "Edit on GitHub" button at the top that links you straight to it.

In the ReactTestUtils.js file, you could add an invariant that makes sure React.isValidElement returns false on the passed-in node.