Testing submitted data from Angular Reactive form

Question

Based on the very first example in https://angular.io/guide/reactive-forms, I create the following dumb component:

@Component({
  selector: 'app-name-editor',
  templateUrl: './name-editor.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./name-editor.component.css']
})
export class NameEditorComponent {

  name = new FormControl('');

  @Output('submitted') submitted = new EventEmitter<string>();

  onSubmit() { this.submitted.emit(this.name.value); }
}

... for which I would like to write a unit test that will validate that a value is submitted. This uses a TestHost as suggested in the https://angular.io/guide/testing#component-inside-a-test-host :

@Component({
  template: `
     <app-name-editor (submitted)=onSubmit($event)>
     </app-name-editor>
   `})
class TestHostComponent {
  submitted: string;
  onSubmit(data: string) { this.submitted = data; }
}

describe('NameEditorComponent', () => {
  let testHost: TestHostComponent;
  let fixture: ComponentFixture<TestHostComponent>;
  let editorDebugElt: DebugElement;

  beforeEach(() => {
    TestBed.configureTestingModule({
      declarations: [ NameEditorComponent, TestHostComponent ]
    });
    fixture = TestBed.createComponent(TestHostComponent);
    testHost = fixture.componentInstance;
    editorDebugElt = fixture.debugElement.query(By.directive(NameEditorComponent));
    fixture.detectChanges();
  });

  it('should capture data', () => {
    const compiled = fixture.debugElement.nativeElement;
    const nameInput = compiled.querySelector('input[type="text"]');
    expect(nameInput).toBeTruthy();
    nameInput.value = 'This is a test';
    fixture.detectChanges();

    // Find submit button
    const submitInput = compiled.querySelector('input[type="submit"]');
    expect(submitInput).toBeTruthy();

    // Trigger click action
    expect(testHost.submitted).toBeFalsy();
    submitInput.click();

    // Submitted
    expect(testHost.submitted).toBe('This is a test');    
  });
});

The test fails but I cannot see why. The input is populated with the value as shown below the test result. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

The reason why the form submits a blank value is because reactive forms are asynchronous.

Editing the form and submitting immediately afterwards will submit a blank form as the edit is occurring asynchronously. The test now passes by adding a wait time of 500ms but it would be nice to know how to avoid the wait though:

    // Wait for asynchronous update on reactive form to happen
    setTimeout(() => {

      // Trigger click action
      expect(testHost.submitted).toBeFalsy();
      submitInput.click();

      // Submitted
      expect(testHost.submitted).toBe('This is a test');

    }, 500);