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Error: [🍍]: “getActivePinia()” was called but there was no active Pinia

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Error: [🍍]: "getActivePinia()" was called but there was no active Pinia error message
No active Pinia error message

I was recently making minor code changes and noticed I broke the unit tests with my updates. I ran into the following error: 

FAIL tests/unit/router/guards.spec.ts [ tests/unit/router/guards.spec.ts ]
Error: [🍍]: "getActivePinia()" was called but there was no active Pinia. Are you trying to use a store before calling "app.use(pinia)"?
See https://pinia.vuejs.org/core-concepts/outside-component-usage.html for help.
This will fail in production.

What triggered the unit test failure left me stumped longer than I care to admit, so I figured I’d write up this quick blog post to ensure I never make the same mistake again.

The Scenario

I was making changes to my Vue Router’s navigation guard.ts file. There was a reference to a store and I noticed it was used in more than on location and foolishly thought it would be a good idea to move the variable declaration outside of the function so it could be used more than once.

Before 

import { useGenericStore } from '@/stores';

export const genericGuard = () => {
    const genericStore = useGenericStore();

    // other code
};

After

import { useGenericStore } from '@/stores';

const genericStore = useGenericStore();

export const genericGuard = () => {
    // other code
};

The Problem

By moving the declaration of genericStore outside of the individual function blocks, I ensured it was being called before Pinia was being activated, hence the error.

Now this should have been a really quick catch, but the change was made among several other changes. I mistakenly assumed on of those other changes were the culprit. If I took the time to carefully read the error message and navigate to the helpful link provided, I would have easily deduced the culprit was trying to reference useGenericStore() outside of the guard function blocks.

Useful Links

The following are useful links I came across as I was trying to troubleshoot my problem:

LET’S BE FRIENDS!

Ashley
Ashley