elixirphoenix-frameworkfunctional-testingphoenix-channelsphoenix-live-view

How to test handle_info/2 in Phoenix LiveView?


Greetings Phoenix LiveView Wizards! 👋

Context

We have a basic LiveView counter app: https://github.com/dwyl/phoenix-liveview-counter-tutorial
The code is very simple: /live/counter.ex
The App works as expected, see: https://live-view-counter.herokuapp.com

The test file is: test/live_view_counter_web/live/counter_test.exs
We are stuck with trying to invoke the handle_info/2 function in a test.
So we have code in our project that is untested. Which is undesirable.
See: https://codecov.io/gh/dwyl/phoenix-liveview-counter-tutorial/src/master/lib/live_view_counter_web/live/counter.ex

counter-not-covered

We have read through the official docs https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_live_view/Phoenix.LiveViewTest.html
but have not been able to understand how to do it. What are we missing?

We really want to use LiveView in our "real" projects, but we want to ensure that our LiveView apps are fully tested.

Question

How do we write a test to invoke the handle_info/2 function?


Solution

  • After much research, trial and error, error, error (iteration), we came up with the following test:

    test "handle_info/2", %{conn: conn} do
      {:ok, view, disconnected_html} = live(conn, "/")
      assert disconnected_html =~ "Count: 0"
      assert render(view) =~ "Count: 0"
      send(view.pid, %{payload: %{ val: 1 }})
      assert render(view) =~ "Count: 1"
    end
    

    Thanks to @daniel for pointing us in the direction of the send/2 function.
    and @AlekseiMatiushkin for patiently asking probing questions above. 👍 Thanks to @chrismccord for the insight: https://elixirforum.com/t/how-to-test-handle-info-2-in-phoenix-liveview/30070/7