Using supertest to check didFlash after a redirect

Question

I'm trying to test what happens when the user destroy callback receives an error for the user controller. When destroy receives an error, it does the following:

flash('error', 'Can not destroy user');
redirect(path_to.users);

This is the test so far:

it('should fail on DELETE /users/:id if destroy receives an error', function (done) {
    var User = app.models.User;
    var user = new UserStub();

    User.find = sinon.spy(function (id, callback) {
        callback(null, user);
    });

    user.destroy = sinon.spy(function (callback) {
        callback(new Error());
    });

    request(app)
        .del('/users/55')
        .end(function (err, res) {
            res.header.location.should.include('/users');
            app.didFlash('error').should.be.true;

            done();
        });
});

I've seen this question and the res.header.. portion works as expected. However, I'm still confused on how I can test the flash that happens after that redirect.

Answer 1

I ended up changing the users_controller to use the following code for a destroy callback (the redirect was having other issues):

if (error) {
    flash('error', 'Can not destroy user');
} else {
    flash('info', 'User successfully removed');
}
send(302, "'" + pathTo.users + "'");

The init.js file used with mocha.js has a few pieces in it when initializing the app object (some irrelevant code was omitted):

global.getApp = function(done) {
    var app = require('compound').createServer();

    app.renderedViews = [];
    app.flashedMessages = {};

    app._render = app.render;
    app.render = function (viewName, opts, fn) {
        app.renderedViews.push(viewName);

        // Deep-copy flash messages
        var flashes = opts.request.session.flash;
        for(var type in flashes) {
            app.flashedMessages[type] = [];
            for(var i in flashes[type]) {
                app.flashedMessages[type].push(flashes[type][i]);
            }
        }

        return app._render.apply(this, arguments);
    };

    app.use(function (req, res, next) {
        app._request = req;
        next();
    });

    app.didFlash = function (type) {
        var flashes = app._request.session.flash;        
        return !!(app.flashedMessages[type] || (flashes && flashes[type]));

    };

    return app;
};

The original way of checking for didFlash was limited to only rendering, but this checks if a flash message is created before a redirect or send.