Unit test AngularJS controller that inherits from a base controller via $controller - angularjs

Question

The scenario is I have a ChildCtrl controller that inherits from BaseCtrl following this inheritance pattern:
angular.module('my-module', [])
.controller('BaseCtrl', function ($scope, frobnicate) {
console.log('BaseCtrl instantiated');
$scope.foo = frobnicate();
// do a bunch of stuff
})
.controller('ChildCtrl', function ($controller, $scope) {
$controller('BaseCtrl', {
$scope: $scope,
frobnicate: function () {
return 123;
}
});
});
Assuming BaseCtrl does a bunch of stuff and is already well tested, I want to test that ChildCtrl instantiates BaseCtrl with certain arguments. My initial thought was something along these lines:
describe("ChildCtrl", function () {
var BaseCtrl;
beforeEach(module('my-module'));
beforeEach(module(function($provide) {
BaseCtrl = jasmine.createSpy();
$provide.value('BaseCtrl', BaseCtrl);
}));
it("inherits from BaseCtrl", inject(function ($controller, $rootScope) {
$controller('ChildCtrl', { $scope: $rootScope.$new() });
expect(BaseCtrl).toHaveBeenCalled();
}));
});
However when I run the test the spy is never called and the console shows "BaseCtrl instantiated", indicating that $controller is using the actual controller instead of the instance I am providing with $provide.value().
What's the best way to test this?

Answer 1

So it looks like $controller doesn't search for controllers by name in the $provide.value() namespace. Instead you have to use the $controllerProvider.register() method, which is only accessible from the module.config() block. Fortunately it looks like there's a hook we can use to get access to $controllerProvider on the module under test.
The updated test code looks like:
describe("ChildCtrl", function () {
var BaseCtrl;
beforeEach(module('my-module', function ($controllerProvider) {
BaseCtrl = jasmine.createSpy();
BaseCtrl.$inject = ['$scope', 'frobnicate'];
$controllerProvider.register('BaseCtrl', BaseCtrl);
}));
beforeEach(inject(function ($controller, $rootScope) {
$controller('ChildCtrl', { $scope: $rootScope.$new() });
}));
it("inherits from BaseCtrl", inject(function ($controller, $rootScope) {
expect(BaseCtrl).toHaveBeenCalled();
}));
it("passes frobnicate() function to BaseCtrl that returns 123", function () {
var args = BaseCtrl.calls.argsFor(0);
var frobnicate = args[1];
expect(frobnicate()).toEqual(123);
});
});