supertest: Supertest throwing 404, Client says 200

I have a route to get all friends in a database as follows:

router.get('/friends', function(req, res, next){
  Friend.find(function(err, friends){
    if(err){ console.log(err); }
    req.data = friends;
    next();
  })
});

Hitting this route with postman returns a list of all friends in the database successfully, and other queries from a web client behave normally. However, with Supertest when I try to test this route, a 404 is returned.

Here is the test:

var app = require('../server'); 
var should = require('should');
var supertest = require('supertest');
var request = supertest(app);


describe('Friends', function(){

  it('Should get all friends.', function(done){
    request
      .get('/friends')
      .expect(200)
      .end(function (err, res){
        res.status.should.equal(200);
        done();
      })
  });

});

Now, about 20% of the time, this test will execute successfully for no given reason. My question: Why does supertest return a 404, when all other methods to access the route return 200?

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 9 years ago
Reactions: 30
Comments: 25

Most upvoted comments

For anyone stumbling across this from Google:

Make sure you are using .post() to fetch a post endpoint and .get() for a get endpoint.

I know. Pretty silly, but that was my mistake and why I was getting 400’s when postman reported 200

+15

lissau on Mar 21, 2021

WAW, still facing the same issue. It’s been 5 years since this issue was created

sakrlog on Jul 6, 2022

I had similar issue too using supertest. The highlight here is to make sure you are using .post() and .get() correctly. For instance,

This is the app.ts file where I initiate the routes.

const app = express();
app.set('trust proxy', true);
app.use(json());
app.use(
    cookieSession({
        signed: false,
        secure: true
    })
);

app.use(currentUserRouter);
app.use(signinRouter);
app.use(signoutRouter);
app.use(signupRouter);

app.all('*', async (req, res) => {
    throw new NotFoundError();
});

app.use(errorHandler);

export {app};

This file signup.ts for user signing up.

router.post('/api/users/signup', (req, res) => {
});

In your test file, you have to make sure if testing this signup.ts file, you have to use .post() rather than .get() because that is the route initialized in the signup.ts. Something like this:

it('returns 201 on successful signup', async()=>{
   return request(app)
       .post('/api/users/signup')
       .send({
           email: 'test@test.com',
           password: 'password'
       }).expect(201)
});

In case, where it works in Postman because it assorts to the request type automatically.

Hope this helps.

tenesh on May 31, 2022

Hi, I’m having the same issue! Some of my routes throw 404 in my tests but when I literally copy/paste it to postman, it works

Arinzeokeke on Mar 29, 2018

Long shot here, but in my case, the error was caused by koa-cors. That middleware causes Koa to return a 404 if the origins do not match. (I switched to the official kcors gem and all is well now.) Anywho, it might be worth disabling middleware and testing again to see if you can rule out middleware behavior causing a 404 in your test environment.

twelve17 on Aug 14, 2017

+1 anyone find a solution to this? I have a restify api that with the same behavior, test = 404, but postman = 200. It looks like the test a are firing before the app is ready, but in restify, as far as i can tell, you cant emit an event for mochas before function.

b6t on Jan 17, 2018

@younes-io I have an API route (prefix with “api”) that is present in the app.js file and all other routes are used inside this API route. All these routes return 404 when used with supertest.

App.js app.use(apiRoutes);

Routes.js

const apiRouter = new Router({ prefix: '/api'});
apiRouter.use('/club', ClubRoutes); // these are separate router files
apiRouter.use('/event', EventRoutes); // these are separate router files
export default apiRouter.routes();

now when testing route GET api/club/, I get 404 but get 200 in postman

niteshrawat1995 on Sep 15, 2021

Late to the game, but make sure your app.js file exposes the routes.

younes-io on Sep 15, 2021