Error: $injector:unpr AngularJS Testing mocking object instances - angularjs

Question

I keep running into problems at the minute when i'm testing my AngularJS applications, I try and inject all dependencies however it doesn't seem to be working, any help is greatly appreciated :)
It's quite a large application and i'm trying to break things down as much as possible and test them, however we have a factory called firebaseUser which is, as you can guess a firebaseUser. We also have an instance of this known as userInstance so I'm getting errors whenever I try and mock userInstance.
describe('Dashboard Start Controller', function () {
var scope, ctrl;
beforeEach(function () {
MockFirebase.override();
module('noodleApp.start');
module('noodleApp.noodleFactory');
module('noodleApp.firebaseUser');
module('noodleApp.start');
});
beforeEach(inject(function($rootScope, $controller, $injector) {
scope = $rootScope.$new();
ctrl = $controller('StartController', {$scope: scope});
}));
afterEach(function () {
scope.$destroy();
});
it('should be available', function() {
expect(ctrl).toBeDefined();
});
it('should init with filter being set to all', function() {
expect(scope.filterOn).toBe('all');
});
});
Whenever I run this test I get the following error: Unknown provider: userInstanceProvider <- userInstance <- StartController

Answer 1

$controller is a call to $inject but treated as a service. What happens is you are instantiating the controller but because $inject is used, and you are not passing userInstance, it looks for a provider which isn't found. You need to make sure to pass the service/factory/resolve to your $controller method. By mocking it out and passing it to the controller, you can isolate what you expect to happen and only test the controller in this unit test.
beforeEach(inject(function($rootScope, $controller) {
scope = $rootScope.$new();
userInstanceMock = {
// mock out all methods here
foo: sinon.stub()
}
ctrl = $controller('StartController', {
$scope: scope,
userInstace: userInstaceMock
});
}));