Guide

Unit Testing

Vue CLI has built-in options for unit testing with Jest or Mocha that works out of the box. We also have the official Vue Test Utils which provides more detailed guidance for custom setups.

Simple Assertions

You don’t have to do anything special in your components to make them testable. Export the raw options:

<template>
  <span>{{ message }}</span>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data () {
      return {
        message: 'hello!'
      }
    },
    created () {
      this.message = 'bye!'
    }
  }
</script>

Then import the component along with Vue Test Utils, and you can make many common assertions (here we are using Jest-style expect assertions just as an example):

// Import `shallowMount` from Vue Test Utils and the component being tested
import { shallowMount } from '@vue/test-utils'
import MyComponent from './MyComponent.vue'

// Mount the component
const wrapper = shallowMount(MyComponent)

// Here are some Jest tests, though you can
// use any test runner/assertion library combo you prefer
describe('MyComponent', () => {
  // Inspect the raw component options
  it('has a created hook', () => {
    expect(typeof MyComponent.created).toBe('function')
  })

  // Evaluate the results of functions in
  // the raw component options
  it('sets the correct default data', () => {
    expect(typeof MyComponent.data).toBe('function')
    const defaultData = MyComponent.data()
    expect(defaultData.message).toBe('hello!')
  })

  // Inspect the component instance on mount
  it('correctly sets the message when created', () => {
    expect(wrapper.vm.$data.message).toBe('bye!')
  })

  // Mount an instance and inspect the render output
  it('renders the correct message', () => {
    expect(wrapper.text()).toBe('bye!')
  })
})

Writing Testable Components

A component’s render output is primarily determined by the props it receives. If a component’s render output solely depends on its props it becomes straightforward to test, similar to asserting the return value of a pure function with different arguments. Take a simplified example:

<template>
  <p>{{ msg }}</p>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    props: ['msg']
  }
</script>

You can assert its render output with different props using Vue Test Utils:

import { shallowMount } from '@vue/test-utils'
import MyComponent from './MyComponent.vue'

// helper function that mounts and returns the rendered component
function getMountedComponent(Component, propsData) {
  return shallowMount(Component, {
    propsData
  })
}

describe('MyComponent', () => {
  it('renders correctly with different props', () => {
    expect(
      getMountedComponent(MyComponent, {
        msg: 'Hello'
      }).text()
    ).toBe('Hello')

    expect(
      getMountedComponent(MyComponent, {
        msg: 'Bye'
      }).text()
    ).toBe('Bye')
  })
})

Asserting Asynchronous Updates

Since Vue performs DOM updates asynchronously, assertions on DOM updates resulting from state change will have to be made after vm.$nextTick() has resolved:

// Inspect the generated HTML after a state update
it('updates the rendered message when wrapper.message updates', async () => {
  const wrapper = shallowMount(MyComponent)
  wrapper.setData({ message: 'foo' })

  // Wait a "tick" after state change before asserting DOM updates
  await wrapper.vm.$nextTick()
  expect(wrapper.text()).toBe('foo')
})

For more in-depth information on unit testing in Vue, check out Vue Test Utils and our cookbook entry about unit testing vue components.

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