Verify that an exception is thrown using Mocha / Chai and async/await

Question

I\'m struggling to work out the best way to verify that a promise is rejected in a Mocha test while using async/await.

Here\'s an example that works, but I dislike t

Answer 1

I use a custom function like this:

const expectThrowsAsync = async (method, errorMessage) => {
  let error = null
  try {
    await method()
  }
  catch (err) {
    error = err
  }
  expect(error).to.be.an('Error')
  if (errorMessage) {
    expect(error.message).to.equal(errorMessage)
  }
}

and then, for a regular async function like:

const login = async (username, password) => {
  if (!username || !password) {
    throw new Error("Invalid username or password")
  }
  //await service.login(username, password)
}

I write the tests like this:

describe('login tests', () => {
  it('should throw validation error when not providing username or passsword', async () => {

    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login())
    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login(), "Invalid username or password")
    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login("username"))
    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login("username"), "Invalid username or password")
    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login(null, "password"))
    await expectThrowsAsync(() => login(null, "password"), "Invalid username or password")

    //login("username","password") will not throw an exception, so expectation will fail
    //await expectThrowsAsync(() => login("username", "password"))
  })
})