With Supertest, can I create an alternative request with some headers set by default?

I am using Supertest with Mocha to test an API developed with Node JS.

And I want to do a lót of different tests on the API. With almost all of them I have to set Authorization and Content-Type headers again (because the API requires them for this test).

it('Creation without an email address should fail and return error code 50040', function(done) {
  request
    .post('/mpl/entities')
    .set('Authorization', 'Token 1234567890') //set header for this test
    .set('Content-Type',  'application/json') //set header for this test
    .send({
      firstname: "test"
    })
    .expect('Content-Type', /json/)
    .expect(500)
    .expect(anErrorCode('50040'))
    .end(done);
});

it('Creation with a duplicate email address should fail and return error code 50086', function(done) {
  request
    .post('/mpl/entities')
    .set('Authorization', 'Token 1234567890') //<-- again
    .set('Content-Type',  'application/json') //<-- again, I'm getting tired
    .send({
      email: "[email protected]"
    })
    .expect('Content-Type', /json/)
    .expect(500)
    .expect(anErrorCode('50086'))
    .end(done);
});

Can I create an alternative request with those headers set by default?

If i remember correctly in superagent one can pass a hash to set

agent.set({key:value,key2:value2})

let me know if it doesnt work with supertest.

You could use a common routine to build your "default" headers as an object and pass them to the request:

//# file:config.js

var config = { 
  baseUrl: "http://localhost:8080",
  authorization: { "Authorization":"authvalue" }
}

// Content-Type left out because supertest will use Content-Type json when you use the appropriate method

module.exports = config;

And now in your test.js:

//# file:test.js

var request = require("supertest");
var config = require("./config");

request = request(config.baseUrl+"/api/getTokenValue")
//code to get token value from request

var commonHeaders = { 
  "authorization":tokenValue,
  "X-Testing-Value":1,
  "X-Common-Header":"value"
};

describe("testing", function() {
  it.should('present authorization header to server', function(done) {
    request.get('/someurl')
      .set(commonHeaders)
      .set({"X-TestSpecificHeader":"Value"})
      .expect(200,done) //if not authorized you'd get 401
  });
  it.should('do something else', function(done) {
    request.get('/someUrl')
      .set(commonHeaders)
      .expect(200,done)
  });
})

Also, if you need to have your app get that token value at runtime (most likely) see this article for using a requested token value that is generated for the tests: https://jaketrent.com/post/authenticated-supertest-tests/

You can use the library superagent-defaults as follows:

installation

npm install --save-dev supertest superagent-defaults

usage

var defaults = require('superagent-defaults');
var supertest = require('supertest');

var request = defaults(supertest(app)); // or url

// set the default headers
request.set(commonHeaders);

// use as usually

version

• supertest v3.0.0
• superagent-defaults v0.1.14

What I use to do is something like

First I create a config file to store the default Headers,

Config File:

//# file: defaults.js
var defaults = { 
  l5dDtab: "SomeValue",
  xSignature: true,
  ... more headers here
}
module.exports = defaults;

Then, on each test file where I use supertest I do this:

var defaults = require('./defaults.js');
var supertest = require('supertest');

var host = 'http://localhost:8080';
var request = supertest.agent(host)
            .set("l5d-dtab", defaults.l5dDtab)
            .set("X-Signature", defaults.xSignature);
var response = request.get("SomePath").set("AnotherLocalHeader", "Value");