Unit Testing for Voice Apps

To make sure your Alexa Skills and Google Actions are robust, we highly recommend testing. Learn how to implement unit tests with Jovo.

Introduction to Unit Testing

Unit Testing is a testing method that allows you to make sure individual units of software work as expected. This way you don't have to manually test every potential interaction of your voice app after any change you do to the code, which not only saves a lot of time, but also gives you some well deserved peace of mind.

The Jovo TestSuite allows you to create unit tests for your Alexa Skills and Google Actions that can either test certain individual features, or even full conversational sequences.

Getting Started with the Jovo TestSuite

Use the Jovo Unit Testing Template to get started with some first tests.

Here's everything you need to know to get started:


The Jovo TestSuite builds on top of Mocha, a popular Javascript testing framework, and Chai, a helpful assertion library.

You can add them as dev dependencies like this:

Chai offers several methods. In our sample template, we use the following in the test/sample-tests.js file:

TestSuite Modules

There are two features that are important when creating unit tests with Jovo:

  • PlatformRequestBuilder: Will help you create requests for both Alexa Skills and Google Actions that can be tested agains the app logic. Supported platforms:
    • AlexaSkill
    • GoogleActionDialogFlowV2 (Dialogflow API v2)
    • GoogleActionDialogFlow (Dialogflow API v1)
  • send: TestSuite feature to send the created requests to the Jovo webhook

In the sample template's test/sample-tests.js, they are integrated like this:

A First Test

Use the getPlatformRequestBuilder to access the request builders for the platforms that you need:

Inside this for loop, you can add any test or test group like this:

For example, a test that simulates a full conversation flow could look like this (from the sample template test/sample-tests.js):

Run Test Script

After you've defined some first tests, add the following script to your package.json:

This way, you can run the tests with npm test, but don't forget to first start the Jovo webhook:

TestSuite Features

Learn more about all the TestSuite features:


The main component of the TestSuite is the function send(). With it, the user is able to send specific requests to the running Jovo App.

send() returns a Promise, which means that you can nest multiple requests for a whole simulated conversation flow according to the Promise concept.

Apart from using the RequestBuilder for defining request intents, you can also build your own JSON request object and pass it to send(). Be careful with this though, as an invalid request object will fail. Alternatively, you can pass the object as an argument to rb.intent(object) to access the requestbuilder functions on your own object. Keep in mind, that you cannot pass an AlexaRequest into the GoogleActionRequestBuilder and vice versa. Passing your own object as the parameter works for every request option that the RequestBuilder offers.


The RequestBuilder can be used to build intentRequests easily with respective functions.


This sends a basic LaunchRequest to your voice app, hence simulates the start of your voice application.


This sends a default intentRequest with the intentName 'HelpIntent'. You can specify the intentName by passing it into intent('intentName') as the first parameter or by calling intent().setIntentName('intentName'). Slots/Parameters can be added as well by passing them as an object as the second parameter in intent('intentName', {key: 'value'}) or by using the method intent().addInput('key', 'value').

Access Token

If you have account linking set up and need to pass in an access token to interact with your intents, you can use this method to attach the accessToken property with the value you pass in to setAccessToken(Value) to the user property in the request.

Session Attributes

Although session attributes are applied automatically, you may want to go straight to a specific intent without calling the whole conversation flow before. For this situation, you can call rb.intent().setSessionAttribute('key', 'value') to specify session attributes. As a shortcut for only setting a specific state, you have the option to use setState('stateName'). If you want to add multiple session attributes at once, you can pass them as an object:


To simulate a new session, you can call rb.intent().setSessionNew(true). Per default, rb.intent() won't represent a new session.


To alter the type of a request, use rb.intent().setType('type'). This only works for Alexa.

Alexa Specifics

AudioPlayer Directives

To send AudioPlayer Directives to your voice app, you can build the request object with rb.audio(). You can specify the directive by passing it as the parameter rb.audio('PlaybackStopped') or by calling setType('AudioPlayer.PlaybackStopped').


To simulate an error sent to your application, you can call rb.error().

Skill Event

If your skill is for instance disabled, a SkillEventRequest is sent to let your app know about it. To simulate that, use rb.skillEvent(). To alter the type of the skillEvent, pass it as a parameter or call setType('AlexaSKillEvent.SkillDisabled') like shown above for AudioPlayer Directives.


To simulate a display event, that occurres when for example a user touches the display of an Echo Show. Simply call rb.touch(). To alter the type of the skillEvent, pass it as a parameter or call setType('Display.ElementSelected) like shown above for AudioPlayer Directives.


Per default, user data is stored in a file ./db/db.json. All methods available from our TestSuite to add/update/read/delete user data access this file through the configuration set in ./app/app.js. If you want to test your application with a different file, you can specify this in ./app/app.js:

For accessing data across sessions, you can add user data to your user.

This method expects a userId as the first parameter, to identify the user. For the default id, that comes with the default intent rb.intent(), you can simply call rb.intent().getUserId() or pass it as a string. If you built your own intent request, you can pass it to rb.intent() like shown above and call getUserId():

To set the userId, call rb.intent().setUserId('userId');.

If you want to add user data between two requests, you can nest addUserData() with send().

You can also add a new user by passing a user object to addUser(userObject).

If you want to check if some data is stored for a specific user, use getUserData('userId', 'key') to receive the value or getUserData('userId') to get all data for the specified user.

It is recommended to delete the user or remove specific user data after your test. This way you can assure, that the next test runs independently.

If you want to remove specific user data, call removeUserData('userId', 'key') or just removeUserData('userId') to remove all data for the specified user. If you want to remove a whole user, you can use removeUser('userId'), or removeUser() to delete all users.


If you want to access the final response object from your workflow, send() returns a variable res, presenting a ResponseObject with respective functions. You can call these and expect a certain value from them, using expect from the Chai Assertion Library per default. Of course, you are free to use any other assertion methods.


This method checks, if the response is a tell and compares the given parameter with the actual value, returning true if this is the case.

If you have dynamic values in your code (e.g. this.tell(['Hello World', 'Hey World']);), you can check for these values by passing the same array in isTell().


isAsk() works the same way as isTell(), except with 2 parameters instead of just one (for reprompts).

This works with dynamic values as well.


Check if a specific session attribute has been delivered with the response.

Alternatively, if you just want to check if the response includes any session attributes, use res.hasSessionAttributes().

Again, a shortcut to check if your response contains a specific state would be res.hasState('state').


Checks if the session should end.


We offer you the possibility to record your requests and responses while testing your app in the console or per voice. For that, add the following parameter to your cli command:

These will be stored in ./test/recordings/{name}/{platform}/. To access these files, you can use the require() function:

You also have the possibility to pass them as a parameter to the respective RequestBuilder funciton to access specific methods, to alter your object:

Comments and Questions

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