Jest mock aws-sdk ReferenceError: Cannot access before initialization

Question

Jest 25.3.0

I am trying to mock DynamoDB dependency in my unit tests as follows:

const { findById } = require('./mymodule');

const mockDynamoDB = { getItem: jest.fn() };
jest.mock('aws-sdk', () => ({
  DynamoDB: jest.fn(() => mockDynamoDB)
}));

describe('.', () => {
  it('..', () => {
    findById('test');
    expect(mockDynamoDB.getItem).toBeCalledWith({
      TableName: 'table-name',
      Key: {
        id: { S: 'test' }
      }
    });
  });
});

Unfortunately, when I do that, I get the following error:

ReferenceError: Cannot access 'mockDynamoDB' before initialization

Strangely, if I do this, I can avoid the ReferenceError:

const mockGetItem = { promise: jest.fn() };
jest.mock('aws-sdk', () => ({
  DynamoDB: jest.fn(() => ({
    getItem: jest.fn(() => mockGetItem)
  })
}));

but this doesn't suit my test, as I can't validate the params passed to the getItem function.

The actual code under test is fairly simple, it looks something like this:

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');

const dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB({apiVersion: '2012-08-10'});

const toRecord = (item) => ({
  id: item.id.S,
  name: item.name.S
});

const findById = (id) => (
  dynamodb.getItem({
    TableName: 'table-name',
    Key: {
      id: { S: id }
    }
  }).promise()
    .then(result => toRecord(result.Item))
    .catch(error => console.log(error)
);

module.exports = {
  findById
}

If anyone has seen this before, or can shed some light on why the first example fails while the second works, it would really help me out. Thank you.

Solution

Here is the unit test solution:

index.js:

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');

const dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB({ apiVersion: '2012-08-10' });
const toRecord = (item) => ({
  id: item.id.S,
  name: item.name.S,
});

const findById = (id) =>
  dynamodb
    .getItem({
      TableName: 'table-name',
      Key: {
        id: { S: id },
      },
    })
    .promise()
    .then((result) => toRecord(result.Item))
    .catch((error) => console.log(error));

module.exports = { findById };

index.test.js:

const { findById } = require('./');
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');

jest.mock('aws-sdk', () => {
  const mDynamoDB = { getItem: jest.fn().mockReturnThis(), promise: jest.fn() };
  return { DynamoDB: jest.fn(() => mDynamoDB) };
});

describe('61157392', () => {
  let dynamodb;
  beforeAll(() => {
    dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB();
  });
  afterAll(() => {
    jest.resetAllMocks();
  });
  it('should pass', async () => {
    dynamodb.getItem().promise.mockResolvedValueOnce({
      Item: {
        id: { S: '1' },
        name: { S: 'a' },
      },
    });
    const actual = await findById('1');
    expect(actual).toEqual({ id: '1', name: 'a' });
    expect(dynamodb.getItem).toBeCalledWith({
      TableName: 'table-name',
      Key: {
        id: { S: '1' },
      },
    });
    expect(dynamodb.getItem().promise).toBeCalledTimes(1);
  });
});

unit test results with 100% coverage:

 PASS  stackoverflow/61157392/index.test.js (8.216s)
  61157392
    ✓ should pass (4ms)

----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
File      | % Stmts | % Branch | % Funcs | % Lines | Uncovered Line #s 
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
All files |   88.89 |      100 |      75 |    87.5 |                   
 index.js |   88.89 |      100 |      75 |    87.5 | 19                
----------|---------|----------|---------|---------|-------------------
Test Suites: 1 passed, 1 total
Tests:       1 passed, 1 total
Snapshots:   0 total
Time:        9.559s

source code: https://github.com/mrdulin/react-apollo-graphql-starter-kit/tree/master/stackoverflow/61157392

Comments

[grigori]

Hi @slideshowp2, this looks great but I've hit an issue because in my code I've got something like this dynamodb.getItem(params).promise().then(onSuccess).catch(onE‌​rror). Using your approach, I'm getting TypeError: Cannot read property 'then' of undefined. (I've updated my example above, just to be clearer). Thanks for your help.

[slideshowp2]

@grigori Updated answer based on your update. It works fine.

[grigori]

you're right, I had a typo. Thanks a lot, this helped heaps!

[amr ras]

In other cases jest will complain that DynamoDB should be mocked with a function prefixed with 'mock'. So, this doesn't seem like a legit solution. Jest just seems buggy. I've done this in one file and it runs, then in another file it complains.