How do I stop AngularJS app config blocks from running in my directive unit tests with a templateUrl?

Question

I've seen similar questions asked, but not one of them resolves the root of the problem, which assumes the following:

1. I can't use whenGET('').passThrough(), because I'm not using ngMockE2E.
2. I shouldn't need to use ngMockE2E because I'm writing a unit test for a directive that literally does nothing but spit out "bar".
3. One suggestion was to use a proxy server to serve-up these HTTP responses, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of a unit test?

Now, let me show you my directive:

angular.module('app')
  .directive('foo', function () {
    return {
      restrict: 'A',
      templateUrl: 'templates/bar.html'
    };
  });

And here is the unit test:

describe('Directive: foo', function () {

  // load the directive's module
  beforeEach(module('app'));

  var $compile;
  var $rootScope;
  var $httpBackend;

  beforeEach(inject(function(_$compile_, _$rootScope_, $injector) {
    $compile = _$compile_;
    $rootScope = _$rootScope_;
    $httpBackend = $injector.get('$httpBackend');
  }));

  afterEach(function() {
    $httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingExpectation();
    $httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingRequest();
  });

  it('should be bar', inject(function($templateCache) {
    $templateCache.put('templates/bar.html', 'bar');
    var element = $compile('<div data-foo></div>')($rootScope);

    //$httpBackend.whenGET(/^\/translations\//).passThrough(); // doesn't work
    $httpBackend.expectGET(/\/translations\//).respond('201', ''); // works
    $rootScope.$digest();
    $httpBackend.flush();

    expect(element.text()).toBe('bar'); // works
  }));
});

Now, the test works just fine with all this bogus $httpBackend business in there, but this totally doesn't belong in my unit tests! How do I pull this $httpBackend crap out and stop the AngularJS app config blocks from running in my directive unit tests with a templateUrl?

Note: This only happens when there is a templateUrl in the directive.

BTW, the code that's triggering this HTTP request in the app config block is:

$translatePartialLoaderProvider.addPart('index');
$translateProvider.useLoader('$translatePartialLoader', {
  urlTemplate: '/translations/{part}/{lang}.json'
});

But I don't think that's necessarily relevant.

Answer 1

Put your directives into their own module and include that module into your main app module. Then you can test your directive module without loading up your app module.

e.g.

angular.module('app-directives', [])
  .directive('foo', function () {
    return {
      restrict: 'A',
      templateUrl: 'templates/bar.html'
    };
  });

angular.module('app', ['app-directives'])
  //Run your config stuff here