Mock Express.js Client IP Address Using Jest

When working on an Express application that deals with the remote client IP address you might need to mock this IP address in your unit tests, this article shows how you can do this using Jest.

Example Express.js application

Create an example project:

$# Create a new directory and cd into it
$mkdir express-app
$cd express-app
$# Create a package.json file
$npm init -y
$# Install express
$npm i express

This is an example Express application that returns a JSON object containing the client’s IP address using req.ip.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

// Just return the client's IP address as JSON
app.get('/', (req, res) => res.json({ ip: req.ip }));

module.exports.app = app;

Note: By default, if the trust proxy application variable is set to false (default), then the IP is derived from req.connection.remoteAddress otherwise it will be taken from the X-Forwarded-For header depending on your configuration.

See: Express behind proxies for more details.

And this is the module that starts the application on port 3000:

const { app } = require('./app');
const port = 3000;

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Example app listening at http://localhost:${port}`));

Now you can start the application:

$node src/server.js
Example app listening at http://localhost:3000

And try it out:

$curl localhost:3000
{"ip":"::1"}

Mocking the req.ip property

To test this application we’re going to use jest and supertest.

First install them as dev dependencies:

$npm i -D jest supertest

This is an example test file that shows how to mock req.ip using jest.spyOn:

const request = require('supertest');
const req = require('express/lib/request');
const { app } = require('../src/app');

const CLIENT_IP = '1.2.3.4';

beforeEach(() => {
  // Mock the `ip` property on the `req` object
  jest.spyOn(req, 'ip', 'get').mockReturnValue(CLIENT_IP);
});

afterEach(() => {
  // Restore all the mocks back to their original value
  // Only works when the mock was created with `jest.spyOn`
  jest.restoreAllMocks();
});

test('Client IP', async () => {
  const response = await request(app).get('/');

  expect(response.statusCode).toBe(200);
  expect(response.type).toBe('application/json');
  expect(response.body.ip).toEqual(CLIENT_IP);
});

We are passing a third argument get to jest.spyOn because req.ip is a getter function, check out the Jest documentation for more details.