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expectHEAD is documented but not implemented?

In our internal angularjs project, one of the services has $http.head() call which I'm trying to test.

For testing, I'm using Fake HTTP backend provided by angular-mocks. Here is the relevant code:

it('handle status code 200', inject(function ($httpBackend, ConnectionService) {
    spyOn(Math, 'random').andReturn(0.1234);

    httpBackend = $httpBackend;
    httpBackend.expectHEAD('ping?rand=1234').respond(200);
    ConnectionService.sendRequest();
    httpBackend.flush();

    expect(ConnectionService.stats.packetsReceived).toEqual(5);

    httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingExpectation();
    httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingRequest();
}));

Running the test results into the following error:

PhantomJS 1.9.7 (Mac OS X) connection service tests sendRequest function handle status code 200 
FAILED  TypeError: 'undefined' is not a function (evaluating 'httpBackend.expectHEAD('ping?rand=1234')')
at /path/to/app/app-connection-service_test.js:66
at d (/path/to/app/bower_components/angular/angular.min.js:35)
at workFn (/path/to/app/bower_components/angular-mocks/angular-mocks.js:2159)

After digging a little bit, I've found the relevant github issue:

which, as far as I understand, means that there really is not expectHEAD() method in angular-mocks - it is documented, but, in reality, it is not yet a part of a stable angular release.

What is the best way to proceed?

Note that I have to stay with angular <= 1.2, since this app needs to run on IE8 (Angular 1.3 is dropping support for IE8).

One of the workarounds I'm thinking about currently is to replace head() with get(). In this case, I can test it with existing expectGET() method. But I'm not sure about the drawbacks.

Solution

  • As opposed to forking and editing a library, it would be much better practice to use the underlying method. 

    $httpBackend.expect('HEAD', 'ping?rand=1234').respond(200);

    The other method you cannot use is just a shortcut method. It is much better and easier to use this method than changing the library.