How can I make a POST request from a Protractor test?

Question

I would like to make a POST request (with JSON payload) to a database server prior to running a Protractor test, in order to inject test data. How can I do this, if at all possible?

Echolalia

See #21056460 – Upon

@AndresD Is there no other way? I wouldn't mind using the Node http module, but can't figure out how to make async calls from Jasmine tests. – Echolalia

Answer 1

I found a way to do it, with the help of Andres D. The gist of it is to run a script in the browser via browser.executeAsyncScript and inject the $http service in there. The $http service is then told to make a POST request. Here's example CoffeeScript of how it's done:

browser.get('http://your-angular-app.com')
browser.executeAsyncScript((callback) ->
  $http = angular.injector(["ng"]).get("$http")
  $http(
    url: "http://yourservice.com"
    method: "post"
    data: yourData
    dataType: "json"
  )
  .success(->
    callback([true])
  ).error((data, status) ->
    callback([false, data, status])
  )
)
.then((data) ->
  [success, response] = data
  if success
    console.log("Browser async finished without errors")
  else
    console.log("Browser async finished with errors", response)
)

Echolalia

where does this angular at 3rd line come from?. I got undefined angular. – Carbo

@Carbo I don't have the code in front of me, but it's part of Angular's global API. IIRC that function is executed within the context of the loaded page (e.g., http://your-angular-app.com), which must have loaded Angular. – Echolalia

Answer 2

You can just use another library to run the POST request if you just want to populate your database.

For example, you can use superagent in your beforeEach like so:

var request = require( "superagent" );

describe( "Something", function() {

  beforeEach( function( done ) {
    request
      .post( "http://localhost/api/foo" )
      .send( {data : "something"} )
      .end( done );
  } );

} );

Gore

Answer 3

It is possible to run some async setup code in your onPrepare function of your protractor config. You need to explicitly tell protractor to wait for your request to finish. This can be done with flow.await() which plays nice with promises.

onPrepare: function() {

  flow = protractor.promise.controlFlow()

  flow.await(setup_data({data: 'test'})).then( function(result) {
    console.log(result);
  })

}

** As of protractor 1.1.0 on prepare can return a promise, so the use of flow to explictly wait for the promise to resolve is unnecessary.

See: https://github.com/angular/protractor/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

Goda

Not familiar with onPrepare, but would this be run once for the whole suite? I would really need per-test setup/teardown methods. – Echolalia

Yes, it is run once, before any tests are run. It doesn't sound like onPrepare would do what you want. – Goda

flow.await seems to work in an it or beforeEach function also; I don't think there's a restriction to onPrepare. – Var

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but doesn't await expect a promise? Protractor allows you to return a promise from an onPrepare function, so you could just do return setup_data({data: 'test'});. – Classics

This was written prior to Protractor 1.1.0, before onPrepare allowed you to return a promise. It could indeed be simplified. – Goda

Answer 4

Another way of doing POST request from protractor is using "http"

const http = require('http');

   const data = yourData; 
   const options = {
        port: portnumber,
        hostname: hostname,  // without http
        path: '/api/path/',
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
            "content-type": "application/json"                
        }
    };

    const request = http.request(options, function (result) {
        var body = '';

        result.on("data", function (chunk) {
            body = body + chunk;
        });

        result.on("end", function () {
          console.log(body);
        });
    });

    request.write(JSON.stringify(data));
    request.end(); 

Lambaste