NestJS Integration/E2E Testing Example with TypeORM, Postgres, JWT

app.e2e-spec.ts

import { Test, TestingModule } from '@nestjs/testing'
import { INestApplication, LoggerService } from '@nestjs/common'
import * as request from 'supertest'
import { AppModule } from './../src/app.module'

class TestLogger implements LoggerService {
  log(message: string) {}
  error(message: string, trace: string) {}
  warn(message: string) {}
  debug(message: string) {}
  verbose(message: string) {}
}

describe('AppController (e2e)', () => {
  let app: INestApplication

  beforeAll(async () => {
    const moduleFixture: TestingModule = await Test.createTestingModule({
      imports: [AppModule],
    }).compile()

    app = moduleFixture.createNestApplication()
    app.useLogger(new TestLogger())
    await app.init()

    // tip: access the database connection via
    // const connection = app.get(Connection)
    // const a = connection.manager
  })

  afterAll(async () => {
    await Promise.all([
      app.close(),
    ])
  })

  it('/ (GET)', () => {
    return request(app.getHttpServer())
      .get('/')
      .expect(200)
      .expect('Hello World!')
  })

  describe('Authentication', () => {
    let jwtToken: string

    describe('AuthModule', () => {
      // assume test data includes user [email protected] with password 'password'
      it('authenticates user with valid credentials and provides a jwt token', async () => {
        const response = await request(app.getHttpServer())
          .post('/auth/login')
          .send({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'password' })
          .expect(200)

        // set jwt token for use in subsequent tests
        jwtToken = response.body.accessToken
        expect(jwtToken).toMatch(/^[A-Za-z0-9-_=]+\.[A-Za-z0-9-_=]+\.?[A-Za-z0-9-_.+/=]*$/) // jwt regex
      })

      it('fails to authenticate user with an incorrect password', async () => {
        const response = await request(app.getHttpServer())
          .post('/auth/login')
          .send({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'wrong' })
          .expect(401)

        expect(response.body.accessToken).not.toBeDefined()
      })

      // assume test data does not include a [email protected] user
      it('fails to authenticate user that does not exist', async () => {
        const response = await request(app.getHttpServer())
          .post('/auth/login')
          .send({ email: '[email protected]', password: 'test' })
          .expect(401)

        expect(response.body.accessToken).not.toBeDefined()
      })
    })

    describe('Protected', () => {
      it('gets protected resource with jwt authenticated request', async () => {
        const response = await request(app.getHttpServer())
          .get('/protected')
          .set('Authorization', `Bearer ${jwtToken}`)
          .expect(200)

        const data = response.body.data
        // add assertions that reflect your test data
        // expect(data).toHaveLength(3) 
      })
    })
  })

})

@damiankim1 that's a great link from MSFT + you are quite right that the specific example is best described as an integration test. I did name the gist "Integration/E2E" with "Integration" placed first :-)

Why call it both? FYI you can use the supertest library (w/ underlying superagent) to hit any URL you want, so the gist could feasibly serve as boilerplate for both test strategies especially if testing an API. The library even supports unix domain sockets. This is a gist after all - an aide-mémoire and time-saving starter :)

I agree a strong E2E testing should flex as much of the stack as it can because there's a lot that can go wrong in between a user and an API that passes tests at the app-focused level of integration tests, especially in the cloud-driven IaC and CI/CD automate everything kind of Internet we live in these days with tons of code + configuration in between.

Cypress (https://www.cypress.io/) is my pick for broader e2e + front-end testing these days.

I can't help but notice your recent account... Are you like the face of some targeted guerilla content marketing for stoplight.io!? If you work there, I'm curious -- why not use your real persona? It'd be even more authentic + legit + personal!

@firxworx Haha, sorry it is a new github account from the company I just joined a few days ago. I was looking into configuring integration test on existing project, but I am new to nestjs so I came across your blog post. cypress is also a good tool I agree, my previous company used stoplight for API e2e test. While I agree supertest is a very handy tool, I still think it is more suitable for integration test. Again, thank you for the code example, will help me a lot :)

What about if we want to create another special database for e2e test itself before beginning of the test(namely should create new database if not exists) and drop database after the test

Hello im new using nest js, how can i share my token that i get in auth-e2e.spect.ts beetween anothers e2e.spect.ts that i have endpoints protected with jwt? any solution? because here we use the token in the same test suite.
thanks for the snippet was very useful for my project but i want to do some refactor in my code :)