How can I get started with mocha and make my first test?

Question

I want to figure out whats wrong with my JS code. The code is pretty simple, and has a really simple error, but I want to set up tests. I googled around for javascript testing frameworks and found one similar to RSPEC, called Mocha, which has a Chai extension which I think gives it more jQuery functionality.

I'm not a nodejs user, I'm usually a PHP backend with some Ruby on Rails experience, So npm install mocha intimidates me. I couldn't find anything on google that suggested I could get mocha set up without node package manager, and it generally seemed really hard to set up my first test. I don't want to spend so much time familiarizing myself with node, when all I want to do is write a simple test and try testing out.

Answer 1

Actually, "installing" mocha is not that much more complicated than "installing" jQuery! Simply include the file. This makes it actually really easy to set up a JSFiddle for testing Javascript code. I've done that with 3 simple tests so that you can see the syntax, and easily get started testing your javascript code with mocha. As always, refer to the mocha docs , the chai docs when you want to learn more.

mocha.setup("bdd");
chai.should();
var asdf = "tests.";
//simple test
describe('Simple ' + asdf, function(){
    it('true = true?', function(){
        var j = true;
        var i = true;
        i.should.equal(j);
    });
});
// Run all our test suites.  Only necessary in the browser.
mocha.run();

Here is a JSFiddle with mocha loaded so you can get started:

http://jsfiddle.net/kbjwLsab/12/