How can I retrieve the cookies from a supertest request in Jest?

Question

I'm just starting with Jest and I'm trying to test a POST/register endpoint. This endpoint sends back 2 cookies: accessToken:*jwt* and refreshToken:*jwt*.

This is my test file:

import server from "../server"
import supertest from "supertest"
import mongoose from "mongoose"

import dotenv from "dotenv"
dotenv.config()

const request = supertest(server)

describe("Testing Auth endpoints", () => {
  beforeAll(done => {
    const PORT = process.env.PORT
    mongoose
      .connect(process.env.MONGO_STRING_TEST!)
      .then(() => {
        console.log("Connect to Atlas. Test DB.")
        done()
      })
      .catch(err => console.log(err))
  })

  const validUser = {
    name: "Paul Stevens",
    email: "ps@g.com",
    password: "1234",
    role: "host",
  }

  it("should test /register for a valid request and return 201 status code and accessToken and refreshToken through cookies", async () => {
    const resp = await request.post("/users/register").send(validUser)
    // I want the content of the cookies here
  })

  afterAll(done => {
      mongoose.connection.close(() => {
        done()
    })
  })
})

This is the endpoint. I'm testing this stuff so I'm actually sending the tokens both in the response body and the cookies.

UsersRouter.post("/register", async (req, res, next) => {
  try {
    const newUser = new UserModel(req.body)
    const savedUser = await newUser.save()
    const { accessToken, refreshToken } = await getTokens(savedUser)
    res.cookie("accessToken", accessToken, { httpOnly: true })
    res.cookie("refreshToken", refreshToken, { httpOnly: true })
    res.status(201).send({ accessToken, refreshToken, user: savedUser })
  } catch (error) {
    next(createError(400, error as Error))
  }
})

How can I retrieve both tokens so I can reuse them to test other endpoints? I was able to see that the cookies are there under resp.header["set-cookie"] but this is an array with two strings containing the tokens. Is there a better way to simply extract the tokens?

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '22 at 03:47

I know it's late but better late than never, recently I was trying to do the same kind of tests in my APIs, so what I did to get access to cookies was simply extract it from headers, like so:

  it("should test /register for a valid request and return 201 status code and accessToken and refreshToken through cookies", async () => {
    const resp = await request.post("/users/register").send(validUser)
    const cookies = resp.headers['set-cookie']
    console.log(cookies)
    // your cookies will looks like this:
    // [
   //    "accessToken=yourAccessToken",
  //     "refreshToken=yourRefreshToken"
       ]
  })

Hope it help anyone else with the same problem!

How can I retrieve the cookies from a supertest request in Jest?

1 Answers1