How to inject dependencies in jasmine test for a angular item

Here is the test spec file:

describe('Test main controller', function(){
        it('Should initialize value to Loading', function(){
            $scope = {}
            ctrl =  new mainNavController($scope)
            expect($scope.wksp_name).toBe('Loading')
        })
    })

Here is the controller file

function mainNavController($scope) {
    $scope.wksp_name = 'Loading...'
    $scope.$on('broadCastWkspNameEvent', function (e, args) {
        $scope.wksp_name = args
    })
}

mainNavController.$inject=['$scope']

But my test fails saying Object #<Object> has no method '$on'

I am using the basic setup of jasmine. 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
  <title>Jasmine Spec Runner</title>

  <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/png" href="testlib/jasmine-1.2.0/jasmine_favicon.png">
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="testlib/jasmine-1.2.0/jasmine.css">
  <script type="text/javascript" src="testlib/jasmine-1.2.0/jasmine.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="testlib/jasmine-1.2.0/jasmine-html.js"></script>

  <!-- include source files here... -->
  <script type="text/javascript" src="/static_files/js/test-specs/main-nav-spec.js"></script>

  <!-- include spec files here... -->
  <script type="text/javascript" src="/static_files/js/common/jquery/latest.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="/static_files/js/common/angular/angular-1.0.1.min.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="/static_files/js/common/angular/angular-resource-1.0.1.min.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="/static_files/js/section/main-nav-controller.js"></script>

  <script type="text/javascript">
    (function() {
      var jasmineEnv = jasmine.getEnv();
      jasmineEnv.updateInterval = 1000;

      var htmlReporter = new jasmine.HtmlReporter();

      jasmineEnv.addReporter(htmlReporter);

      jasmineEnv.specFilter = function(spec) {
        return htmlReporter.specFilter(spec);
      };

      var currentWindowOnload = window.onload;

      window.onload = function() {
        if (currentWindowOnload) {
          currentWindowOnload();
        }
        execJasmine();
      };

      function execJasmine() {
        jasmineEnv.execute();
      }

    })();
  </script>

</head>

<body>
</body>
</html>

What is it that I am doing wrong? I am not able to understand how this thing is supposed to work :)

The main problem with your test code is that it tries to create a controller's instance "by hand" using the new operator. When doing so AngularJS has no chance to inject dependencies. What you should be doing is to allow AngularJS inject dependencies:

var $scope, ctrl;

//you need to inject dependencies first
beforeEach(inject(function($rootScope) {
    $scope = $rootScope.$new();        
}));

it('Should initialize value to Loading', inject(function($controller) {
    ctrl = $controller('MainNavController', {
        $scope: $scope
    });
    expect($scope.wksp_name).toBe('Loading...');
}));

Here is the link to a complete jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/pkozlowski_opensource/7a7KR/3/

There are 2 things worth noticing in the above example:

  1. You can use inject() method from the ngMock module to inject dependencies: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngMock/function/angular.mock.inject
  2. To create a controller instance (with dependency injection) you would use the $controller service: http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$controller

As the last remark: I would advice naming controllers starting from an uppercase letter - this way we won't confuse them with variable names.

Great answer by @pkozlowski.opensource. To elaborate a bit more... Sometimes it could be also handy to assert that $scope.$on was really called by your controller. In this case you can spy on $scope.$on as pointed out below:

beforeEach(inject(function($rootScope) {
    $scope = $rootScope.$new();        
    spyOn($scope, '$on').andCallThrough();
}));

And then you can assert that $on was called with your event name and some function as arguments:

it('Should bind to "broadCastWkspNameEvent"', inject(function($controller) {
    ctrl = $controller('MainNavController', {
        $scope: $scope
    });
    expect($scope.$on).toHaveBeenCalledWith('broadCastWkspNameEvent', jasmine.any(Function));
}));

I agree with pkozowski's response, but to answer your question more directly, you need to stub out '$on'

Your example would pass if your $scope looked like:

$scope = {
  $on: function() {}
}