BeforeEach with expectGets cannot be executed more then once - unit-testing

Question

I have a problem with my unit test for a directive where I need to setup the directive before being able to test it.
This is the way I initialize it:
var elm, $templateCache
var count = 0;
beforeEach(module('app/js/directives/templates/mytemplate.html'));
beforeEach(inject(function($injector) {
$templateCache = $injector.get('$templateCache');
}));
beforeEach(inject(
['$httpBackend','$compile','$rootScope', function(_$compile) {
var template = $templateCache.get('app/js/directives/templates/mytemplate.html');
if(count == 0 ){
$httpBackend.expectGET('js/directives/templates/mytemplate.html').respond(template);
}
elm = angular.element('<div my-directive</div>');
$compile(elm)($rootScope);
if(count == 0){
$httpBackend.expectGET('/app/js/content/some.json').respond('{ "left" : "<div>Contact information</div>"}');
$httpBackend.flush();
}
$rootScope.$digest();
count++;
}]
));
afterEach(function() {
$httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingExpectation();
$httpBackend.verifyNoOutstandingRequest();
});
it("should work like I want it to", function() {
$rootScope.my-directive.somefunction();
expect($rootScope.somevalue).toBe(2);
});
it("should load the previous page if the function scope.layover.qa_pager.prev is called", function() {
$rootScope.my-directive.someotherfunction();
expect($rootScope.somevalue).toBe(1);
});
This works, but the hack with the count should not be needed in my opinion. If I leave it out I get problems with the $httpbackend which doesn't seem to be reinitialised every time so it gives me 'Error: Unsatisfied requests: GET /app/js/content/some.json' and 'Error: No pending request to flush !'

Answer 1

To me it looks like you are trying to load a template for a unit test. I'm assuming you are using karma to run the tests, so you should look at html2js. It loads your templates into the template cache for you.
https://github.com/karma-runner/karma-ng-html2js-preprocessor
// karma.conf.js
module.exports = function(config) {
config.set({
preprocessors: {
'**/*.html': ['ng-html2js']
},
files: [
'*.js',
'*.html'
],
ngHtml2JsPreprocessor: {
// strip this from the file path
stripPrefix: 'public/',
// prepend this to the
prependPrefix: 'served/',
// or define a custom transform function
cacheIdFromPath: function(filepath) {
return cacheId;
}
}
});
};