How to run test file after launching server using npm scripts?

Question

I wanted to exploit the npm script capacities and I tried to create a command to run the tests of my API. Basically I need to launch the API and perform some HTTP requests. I have the tests in a JS file, let's call it automatic-test.js , and I wanted to launch the API and then run these tests.

In my package.json , I tried this call:

"scripts": {
    "start": "node ./bin/www",
    "test": "npm start & node test/automatic-test.js"
}

The test command starts the API server but it doesn't run the tests file. I tried changing & by && , || and ; ( here ), but none of it makes the command line to reach the second part of the command. I tried to even write the content of the start command at the beginning of the test one, but the problem is the same.

I could find a workaround launching the server from the test file ( here ), require('/route/to/server/file') , leaving the test command just like node test/automatic-test.js but I feel like maybe I'm cheating with that. What should I do to make this statement work as I want to?

npm start &/&&/||/; node test/automatic-test.js

Node version: v10.15.0

Npm version: 6.4.1

EDIT: these tests are a very first draft of the future real tests, and are just a bunch of HTTP requests which should only return a very small set of results, they are not proper tests (assessments, mocha, etc.)

Answer 1

By default node doesn't provide ability to test directly you have to add package like mocha

Please follow the docs.

Answer 2

The concurrently npm package is pretty sweet, imho.

It claims to be "Like npm run watch-js & npm run watch-less but better" and since your question started with & tying the commands...

Here's an example from a package.json :

    "test:dev": "concurrently --restart-tries 10 --names rollup,sirv \"rollup --config rollup.test.config.js -w\" \"sirv test --port 3000 --single --dev\"",

It prints the names ("rollup", "sirv") to the output so it become clear, which process did what.

I'm unable to compare with start-server-and-test which was already mentioned.