Testing named function within a Controller - angularjs

Question

A newbie Jasmine/Angular question.
I have a named function within a controller like so:
.controller( 'DummyCtrl', function DummyCtrl($scope){
var doSomething = function() {
return "blah";
};
})
I need to test this function, and am trying to by calling the following Jasmine spec:
describe ('myApp', function(){
var $scope, $controller;
var DummyCtrl;
beforeEach(module('myApp'));
describe('controllers', function(){
beforeEach(inject(function ($controller, $rootScope){
$scope = $rootScope.$new();
DummyCtrl = $controller('DummyCtrl', {$scope: $scope});
}));
describe( 'DummyCtrl', function(){
var blah;
beforeEach(function(){
blah = DummyCtrl.doSomething();
});
it('should do something', function(){
expect(blah).toContain("blah");
});
});
});
});
Instead of things working out, I result in the following error: TypeError: Object #<DummyCtrl> has no method 'doSomething'. I'm assuming this is something super simple that I'm not understanding.

Answer 1

The function DummyCtrl you are providing for the controller registration will be used by Angular as a constructor. If you need the controller instance to expose the function doSomething without attaching it to the $scope, you should attach it to this.
Try changing
var something = function(...
to
this.something = function(...
and your test should work.
You can see this approach here: http://jsfiddle.net/yianisn/8P9Mv/. Also have a look at this SO question: How to write testable controllers with private methods in AngularJs?

Answer 2

In a sense, using functions like that is private, and cannot be accessed from outside the function. Take a look at this link: http://javascript.crockford.com/private.html
Essentially what is said is that have a function/object in javascript, anything with a this. prefix is public, and anything with a var prefix is private.
For Angular, you can definitely have private variables and functions, if not just to lessen the memory usage of the $scope variable. Private functions should be called by your $scope objects to get values to be displayed/used by the user. Try changing it to this:
.controller( 'DummyCtrl', function DummyCtrl($scope){
var doSomething = function() {
return "blah";
};
$scope.something=doSomething();
})
And then testing the private function with:
describe( 'DummyCtrl', function(){
var scope = {},
ctrl = new DummyCtrl(scope);
it('should do something', function(){
expect(scope.something).toMatch('blah');
});
});