Validate React Native Component with Asynchronous Work - react-native

Question

I have a basic component that calls a webservice during the componentDidMount phase and overwrites the contents value in my state:
import React, {Component} from 'react';
import {Text} from "react-native";
class Widget extends Component {
constructor() {
super();
this.state = {
contents: 'Loading...'
}
}
async componentDidMount() {
this.setState(...this.state, {
contents: await this.getSomeContent()
});
}
render() {
return (
<Text>{this.state.contents}</Text>
)
}
async getSomeContent() {
try {
return await (await fetch("http://someurl.com")).text()
} catch (error) {
return "There was an error";
}
}
}
export default Widget;
I would like to use Jest snapshots to capture the state of my component in each one of the following scenarios:
Loading
Success
Error
The problem is that I have to introduce flaky pausing to validate the state of the component.
For example, to see the success state, you must place a small pause after rendering the component to give the setState method a chance to catch up:
test('loading state', async () => {
fetchMock.get('*', 'Some Content');
let widget = renderer.create(<Widget />);
// --- Pause Here ---
await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 100));
expect(widget.toJSON()).toMatchSnapshot();
});
I'm looking for the best way to overcome the asynchronicity in my test cases so that I can properly validate the snapshot of each state.

Answer 1

If you move the asynchronous call out of setState, you can delay setState until the network call has resolved. Then you can use setState's optional callback (which fires after the state change) to capture the state.
So, something like this:
async componentDidMount() {
var result = await this.getSomeContent()
this.setState(...this.state, {
contents: result
},
// setState callback- fires when state changes are complete.
()=>expect(this.toJSON()).toMatchSnapshot()
);
}
UPDATE:
If you want to specify the validation outside of the component, you could create a prop, say, stateValidation to pass in a the validation function:
jest('loading state', async () => {
fetchMock.get('*', 'Some Content');
jestValidation = () => expect(widget.toJSON()).toMatchSnapshot();
let widget = renderer.create(<Widget stateValidaton={jestValidation}/>);
});
then use the prop in the component:
async componentDidMount() {
var result = await this.getSomeContent()
this.setState(...this.state, {
contents: result
},
// setState callback- fires when state changes are complete.
this.props.stateValidaton
);
}