Unit testing of Angular directives with templateUrl and WITHOUT Karma

Question

I've found a solution here of how to load template from templateUrl without using Karma, so I've pasted this code to my beforeEach() and added a checking test:

beforeEach(inject(function ($templateCache,_$compile_, _$rootScope_, $injector, _config_, _$timeout_) {
    var directiveTemplate = null;
    var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
    req.onload = function () {
        directiveTemplate = this.responseText;
    };

    req.open("get", "js/directives/views/questionnaire-list.html", false);
    req.send();
    $templateCache.put("js/directives/views/questionnaire-list.html", directiveTemplate);

    $compile = _$compile_;
    $rootScope = _$rootScope_.$new();
    $rootScope.questionnaires = questionnaire;
    $rootScope.touchDisabled = jasmine.createSpy('touchDisabled');;
    $rootScope.onChange = jasmine.createSpy('onChange');;
    $rootScope.renderingFinished = jasmine.createSpy('renderingFinished');;

    $httpBackend = $injector.get('$httpBackend');
    config = _config_;
}));
it('compiled should not be empty', function () {

        element = angular.element('<questionnaire-list questionnaires = "questionnaires" touch-disabled = "touchDisabled()" on-change = "onChange()" rendering-finished = "renderingFinished()"></questionnaire-list>');
        var result = $compile(element)($rootScope); // Compile the directive
        $rootScope.$digest(); // Update the HTML
        var items = result.html();

        expect(items).not.toEqual("");
    });

But it is equals to "". What am I doing wrong? I'm totally new in testing directives and angularjs itself, so I think I've misunderstood something in using of templateCache.

directive code:

angular.module('app.directives')
    .directive('questionnaireList', questionnaireList);

questionnaireList.$inject = ['$timeout'];

function questionnaireList($timeout) {
    return {
        restrict: 'A',
        templateUrl: 'js/directives/views/questionnaire-list.html',
        scope: {
            questionnaires: '=',
            touchDisabled: '&',
            onChange: '&',
            renderingFinished: '&'
        },
        link: link
    }

    function link(scope, element, attrs) {
        // some code goes here

    }

}

and templateUrl:

<div ng-repeat="questionnaire in questionnaires" children-same-size on-render="onContentRendered">

{{questionnaire.Title}}

<div ng-repeat="item in questionnaire.Questions" class="questions-list-item">
    <div class="question-control"><!--some text--></div>
    <div class="captions">
        <span ng-repeat="label in ::getQuestionLabels(item)">{{::label}}</span>
    </div>
</div>

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Fixed this issue by changing element to <div questionnaire-list="" questionnaires = "questionnaires" touch-disabled = "touchDisabled()" on-change = "onChange()" rendering-finished = "renderingFinished()"></div> . Now items is not empty and contains a correct result.