Sinon.JS Assertions for Chai

Sinon–Chai provides a set of custom assertions for using the Sinon.JS spy, stub, and mocking framework with the Chai assertion library. You get all the benefits of Chai with all the powerful tools of Sinon.JS.

Instead of using Sinon.JS's assertions:

1sinon.assert.calledWith(mySpy, "foo");

or awkwardly trying to use Chai's should or expect interfaces on spy properties:

1mySpy.calledWith("foo").should.be.ok;
2expect(mySpy.calledWith("foo")).to.be.ok;

you can say

1mySpy.should.have.been.calledWith("foo");
2expect(mySpy).to.have.been.calledWith("foo");

Assertions

All of your favorite Sinon.JS assertions made their way into Sinon–Chai. We show the should syntax here; the expect equivalent is also available.

Sinon.JS property/method	Sinon–Chai assertion
called	spy.should.have.been.called
callCount	spy.should.have.callCount(n)
calledOnce	spy.should.have.been.calledOnce
calledTwice	spy.should.have.been.calledTwice
calledThrice	spy.should.have.been.calledThrice
calledBefore	spy1.should.have.been.calledBefore(spy2)
calledAfter	spy1.should.have.been.calledAfter(spy2)
calledImmediatelyBefore	spy.should.have.been.calledImmediatelyBefore(spy2)
calledImmediatelyAfter	spy.should.have.been.calledImmediatelyAfter(spy2)
calledWithNew	spy.should.have.been.calledWithNew
alwaysCalledWithNew	spy.should.always.have.been.calledWithNew
calledOn	spy.should.have.been.calledOn(context)
alwaysCalledOn	spy.should.always.have.been.calledOn(context)
calledWith	spy.should.have.been.calledWith(...args)
alwaysCalledWith	spy.should.always.have.been.calledWith(...args)
calledOnceWith	spy.should.always.have.been.calledOnceWith(...args)
calledWithExactly	spy.should.have.been.calledWithExactly(...args)
alwaysCalledWithExactly	spy.should.always.have.been.calledWithExactly(...args)
calledOnceWithExactly	spy.should.always.have.been.calledOnceWithExactly(...args)
calledWithMatch	spy.should.have.been.calledWithMatch(...args)
alwaysCalledWithMatch	spy.should.always.have.been.calledWithMatch(...args)
returned	spy.should.have.returned(returnVal)
alwaysReturned	spy.should.have.always.returned(returnVal)
threw	spy.should.have.thrown(errorObjOrErrorTypeStringOrNothing)
alwaysThrew	spy.should.have.always.thrown(errorObjOrErrorTypeStringOrNothing)

For more information on the behavior of each assertion, see the documentation for the corresponding spy methods. These of course work on not only spies, but individual spy calls, stubs, and mocks as well.

Note that you can negate any assertion with Chai's .not. E. g. for notCalled use spy.should.have.not.been.called. Similarly, note that the always methods are accessed with Chai's .always prefix; should.have.been.alwaysCalledWith will not work - instead, use should.always.have.been.calledWith.

For simplicity, this library intentionally only implements Sinon's spy methods, and does not add an interface for Sinon.assert.match. Sinon's matchers are implemented by the samsam library, so if you want a should/expect interface to assert.match you may be interested in chai-samsam, which adds a .deep.match verb that will work with Sinon matchers.

For assert interface there is no need for sinon-chai or chai-samsam. You can install Sinon.JS assertions right into Chai's assert object with expose:

1var chai = require("chai");
2var sinon = require("sinon");
3
4sinon.assert.expose(chai.assert, { prefix: "" });

Examples

Using Chai's should:

1"use strict";
2var chai = require("chai");
3var sinon = require("sinon");
4var sinonChai = require("sinon-chai");
5chai.should();
6chai.use(sinonChai);
7
8function hello(name, cb) {
9    cb("hello " + name);
10}
11
12describe("hello", function () {
13    it("should call callback with correct greeting", function () {
14        var cb = sinon.spy();
15
16        hello("foo", cb);
17
18        cb.should.have.been.calledWith("hello foo");
19    });
20});

Using Chai's expect:

1"use strict";
2var chai = require("chai");
3var sinon = require("sinon");
4var sinonChai = require("sinon-chai");
5var expect = chai.expect;
6chai.use(sinonChai);
7
8function hello(name, cb) {
9    cb("hello " + name);
10}
11
12describe("hello", function () {
13    it("should call callback with correct greeting", function () {
14        var cb = sinon.spy();
15
16        hello("foo", cb);
17
18        expect(cb).to.have.been.calledWith("hello foo");
19    });
20});

Installation and Usage

Node

Do an npm install --save-dev sinon-chai to get up and running. Then:

1var chai = require("chai");
2var sinonChai = require("sinon-chai");
3
4chai.use(sinonChai);

You can of course put this code in a common test fixture file; for an example using Mocha, see the Sinon–Chai tests themselves.

AMD

Sinon–Chai supports being used as an AMD module, registering itself anonymously (just like Chai). So, assuming you have configured your loader to map the Chai and Sinon–Chai files to the respective module IDs "chai" and "sinon-chai", you can use them as follows:

1define(function (require, exports, module) {
2    var chai = require("chai");
3    var sinonChai = require("sinon-chai");
4
5    chai.use(sinonChai);
6});

<script> tag

If you include Sinon–Chai directly with a <script> tag, after the one for Chai itself, then it will automatically plug in to Chai and be ready for use. Note that you'll want to get the latest browser build of Sinon.JS as well:

1<script src="chai.js"></script>
2<script src="sinon-chai.js"></script>
3<script src="sinon.js"></script>

Ruby on Rails

Thanks to Cymen Vig, there's now a Ruby gem of Sinon–Chai that integrates it with the Rails asset pipeline!