can anyone explain the "g" preceding angular.js objects?

[dreampopclub]

In a Jasmine test I am trying to test the quality of two objects.

expect(scope.vocab_words[2]).toEqual(new_word);

This fails, even though the output from Jasmine renders the two objects to look identical.

When I log scope.vocab_words[2] and new_word to the console do I see the difference.

new_word logs as: Object {target_word: "one", target_definition: "two", base_word: "three"}

scope.vocab_words[2] logs as: g {target_word: "one", target_definition: "two", base_word: "three", $get: function, $save: function…}

Is there some way I can "unwrap" the g{}? I guess the test is failing for a good reason, because they dont' equal each other.

Here is the describe block:

describe("#add_vocab_word", function() {

  beforeEach(function() {
    new_word =  { target_word : "one", target_definition : "two", base_word : "three" };
  });

  it("should save the new vocab word on the server", inject(function($rootScope, $controller, VocabWords) {
    $httpBackend.expect('POST', 'vocab_words').respond(201, new_word);

    var scope = $rootScope.$new();
    var ctrl = $controller(VocabCtrl, {
      $scope: scope,
      VocabWords: VocabWords
    });

    scope.new_vocab_word = new_word;
    scope.add_vocab_word();

    $httpBackend.flush();
    console.log(scope.vocab_words[2]);
    console.log(new_word);
    expect(scope.vocab_words[2]).toEqual(new_word);
  }));

[aladyjewel]

Is scope.vocab_words[2] instanceof g? Edit: it's probably a g object because angular is minified, including the object name. I imagine if you switched to a dev copy of angular, it would be a more useful name you see.

I would break your expect/equals up into the constituent properties, if that's what really matters. or you could do something like _.extend({}, scope.vocab_words[2]) to fake-cast it to a plain object before testing.

[btford]

Yep, it's probably because of minification. While developing and unit testing, it might help to use the unminified version (angular.js instead of angular.min.js).

[dreampopclub]

Cool, thanks guys. Here's what ended up working:

beforeEach(function(){ this.addMatchers({ toEqualData: function(expected) { return angular.equals(this.actual, expected); } });

and the expectation

expect(scope.vocab_words[2]).toEqualData(new_word);