Unit testing Sails/Waterline models with mocha/supertest: toJSON() issue - unit-testing

Question

I'm setting up unit tests on my Sails application's models, controllers and services.
I stumbled upon a confusing issue, while testing my User model. Excerpt of User.js:
module.exports = {
attributes: {
username: {
type: 'string',
required: true
},
[... other attributes...] ,
isAdmin: {
type: 'boolean',
defaultsTo: false
},
toJSON: function() {
var obj = this.toObject();
// Don't send back the isAdmin attribute
delete obj.isAdmin;
delete obj.updatedAt;
return obj;
}
}
}
Following is my test.js, meant to be run with mocha. Note that I turned on the pluralize flag in blueprints config. Also, I use sails-ember-blueprints, in order to have Ember Data-compliant blueprints. So my request has to look like {user: {...}}.
// Require app factory
var Sails = require('sails/lib/app');
var assert = require('assert');
var request = require('supertest');
// Instantiate the Sails app instance we'll be using
var app = Sails();
var User;
before(function(done) {
// Lift Sails and store the app reference
app.lift({
globals: true,
// load almost everything but policies
loadHooks: ['moduleloader', 'userconfig', 'orm', 'http', 'controllers', 'services', 'request', 'responses', 'blueprints'],
}, function() {
User = app.models.user;
console.log('Sails lifted!');
done();
});
});
// After Function
after(function(done) {
app.lower(done);
});
describe.only('User', function() {
describe('.update()', function() {
it('should modify isAdmin attribute', function (done) {
User.findOneByUsername('skippy').exec(function(err, user) {
if(err) throw new Error('User not found');
user.isAdmin = false;
request(app.hooks.http.app)
.put('/users/' + user.id)
.send({user:user})
.expect(200)
.expect('Content-Type', /json/)
.end(function() {
User.findOneByUsername('skippy').exec(function(err, user) {
assert.equal(user.isAdmin, false);
done();
});
});
});
});
});
});
Before I set up a policy that will prevent write access on User.isAdmin, I expect my user.isAdmin attribute to be updated by this request.
Before running the test, my user's isAdmin flag is set to true. Running the test shows the flag isn't updated:
1) User .update() should modify isAdmin attribute:
Uncaught AssertionError: true == false
This is even more puzzling since the following QUnit test, run on client side, does update the isAdmin attribute, though it cannot tell if it was updated, since I remove isAdmin from the payload in User.toJSON().
var user;
module( "user", {
setup: function( assert ) {
stop(2000);
// Authenticate with user skippy
$.post('/auth/local', {identifier: 'skippy', password: 'Guru-Meditation!!'}, function (data) {
user = data.user;
}).always(QUnit.start);
}
, teardown: function( assert ) {
$.get('/logout', function(data) {
});
}
});
asyncTest("PUT /users with isAdmin attribute should modify it in the db and return the user", function () {
stop(1000);
user.isAdmin = true;
$.ajax({
url: '/users/' + user.id,
type: 'put',
data: {user: user},
success: function (data) {
console.log(data);
// I can not test isAdmin value here
equal(data.user.firstName, user.firstName, "first name should not be modified");
start();
},
error: function (reason) {
equal(typeof reason, 'object', 'reason for failure should be an object');
start();
}
});
});
In the mongoDB console:
> db.user.find({username: 'skippy'});
{ "_id" : ObjectId("541d9b451043c7f1d1fd565a"), "isAdmin" : false, ..., "username" : "skippy" }
Yet even more puzzling, is that commenting out delete obj.isAdmin in User.toJSON() makes the mocha test pass!
So, I wonder:
Is the toJSON() method on Waterline models only used for output filtering? Or does it have an effect on write operations such as update().
Might this issue be related to supertest? Since the jQuery.ajax() in my QUnit test does modify the isAdmin flag, it is quite strange that the supertest request does not.
Any suggestion really appreciated.