Few developers have time to write unit tests, so many don’t.
Imagine a signup route that sends an email confirmation link that includes an access token and another route that checks if the right access token is provided.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if unit tests could programmatically use the access token found in that email and provide it to other unit tests synchronously?
We couldn't find anything of the sort so we developed Lollipop!
- Super simple to use
- Implements live preview
- Implements both instance methods and a restful API to query the message store (that’s where sent emails are temporarily stored)
- Uses trusted dependencies (hapi, cheerio, query-string, etc...)
- Written in TypeScript (builds include type definitions)
- Great test coverage (
npm testornpm run test-lpto enable live preview) - Actively maintained and used in production by the Lickstats team
- Very light codebase to audit
Lollipop works the same way as any other email provider. It is used to "send" emails.
This means Lollipop is implemented in a codebase alongside email providers such as Sengrid.
At Lickstats, we use an environment variable to switch between Lollipop (developement) and Sendgrid (production).
npm install lollipop --save-devBy default, the Lollipop API port is set randomly using get-port.
| Variable | Type | Required | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
LOLLIPOP_PORT |
number | no | random | Sets API port |
DEBUG |
true or false |
no | false |
Enables debug mode |
| Property | Values | Required | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
livePreview |
true or false |
no | false |
Enables live preview |
When should you use instance methods vs the restful API?
Instance methods are great when unit tests inject queries directly to the API (for example, when using inject with hapi).
The restful API is the way to go when your API doesn’t run on the same thread as your unit tests (for example, when using supertest).
'use strict';
import lollipop from 'lollipop';
// If using require, replace by `const lollipop = require('lollipop').default`.
const lollipopInstance = new lollipop({
livePreview: true
});
lollipopInstance.init();Send email using instance method (this doesn’t actually send the email, but rather adds it to the message store)
let messageId = lollipopInstance.send({
from: {
email: 'noreply@lickstats.com',
name: 'Lickstats' // Name is optional
},
to: {
email: 'johndoe@example.com',
name: 'John Doe' // Name is optional
},
subject: 'Welcome to Lickstats!',
html: `
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<body>
<p>Hey John,</p>
<p>Please click on the following link to confirm your email.</p>
<p><a id="email-confirmation-anchor" href="https://app.lickstats.com/login?access_token=51819df95b524388a895738dc4280cca">Confirm your email</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
`
});let parsedMessage = lollipopInstance.latest();
let accessToken = parsedMessage.getLink('email-confirmation-anchor').query.access_token;import { getLink } from 'lollipop';
import request from 'request-promise-native';
let response = await request({
uri: 'http://localhost:port/messages/latest',
json: true
});
let accessToken = getLink(response.body.links, 'email-confirmation-anchor').query.access_tokenlet parsedMessage = lollipopInstance.message(messageId);
let accessToken = parsedMessage.getLink('email-confirmation-anchor').query.access_token;import { getLink } from 'lollipop';
import request from 'request-promise-native';
let response = await request({
uri: 'http://localhost:port/messages/:messageId',
json: true
});
let accessToken = getLink(response.body.links, 'email-confirmation-anchor').query.access_tokenMIT