Capacitor Plugin Mocks with Jest

Mocking a plugin in a unit test can be a challenge. Most mocking libraries mock an object by wrapping a JavaScript proxy around the object. Capacitor plugins, however, are already set up as JavaScript proxies, and you cannot create a proxy of a proxy. To get around this when using Jest as your testing framework, manual mocks is typically used.

The Manual Mocks

For this project, I am using two Capacitor plugins: @capacitor/storage and @capacitor/toast. To create manual mocks for these plugins, I create the following file structure at the root of the project:

.
|
+- __mocks__
| |
| +- @capacitor
|   |
|   +- storeage.ts
|   +- toast.ts
...
+- src

The code in these files create some simple stubs that I use within the tests. For example:

storeage.ts

export const Storage = {
  async get(data: { key: string }): Promise<{ value: string | undefined }> {
    return { value: undefined };
  },

  async set(data: { key: string; value: string }): Promise<void> {},
  async clear(): Promise<void> {},
};

toast.ts

export const Toast = {
  async show(data: {
    text: string;
    duration?: 'short' | 'long';
    position?: 'bottom' | 'center' | 'top';
  }): Promise<void> {},
};

As you can see, they do almost nothing, which is exactly what you want stubs to do.

When I want to have fine-grained control in my tests, I can create mocks on the stubs and have complete control over my tests. For example, here is a test for an @ionic/vue application that controls the return value for Storage.get():

  it("gets the first and last name", async () => {
    Storage.get = jest.fn().mockImplementation(
      async (data: { key: string }): Promise<{ value: string }> => {
        return data.key === "firstName"
          ? { value: "Jimmy" }
          : data.key === "lastName"
          ? { value: "Simms" }
          : { value: "unknown" };
      }
    );
    const w = mount(Home);
    await flushPromises();
    expect(w.vm.firstName).toEqual("Jimmy");
    expect(w.vm.lastName).toEqual("Simms");
  });

The combination of the Jest manual mocks and the standard Jest mocks provides this level of control.

Conclusion

Adding manual mocks to provide stubs for the Capacitor plugins we are using helps to make our unit tests clean and maintainable.

Happy Testing, Everybody!! 🤓