Testing client-side javascript code with Jasmine and node.js

Question

Given: client-side javascript code (runs in browser, uses jquery etc). Currently the code is tested with Rhino and envjs . We would like to switch to node.js. However, after some research, couldn't find any envjs -like supplementary that emulates a browser.

While running node.js "as is", even basic capabilities like alert() or window are missing.

Is there any standard bundle, similar to Rhino & envjs for node.js please?

Answer 1

You could use zombie.js , which has everything you need for testing. Or you could leverage jsdom (which zombie.js uses internally) to get a DOM in node.js, and execute your tests against that DOM.

I can also recommend testling , which executes tests according to your specification in all common browsers -- the code is running in actual browsers against your service.

Here's a simple example with jsdom:

var jsdom = require("jsdom");

jsdom.env(url, ["http://code.jquery.com/jquery.min.js"], function(err, window) {
    // jQuery is at window.$
});

Instead of url above, you could have an HTML document, or fragment.

You can also load a page and fetch any external resources, instead of providing jQuery etc directly to jsdom:

var jsdom = require("jsdom").jsdom,
    doc = jsdom(markup),
    window = doc.createWindow();

// Do your stuff on window, jsdom will have fetched all the scripts referenced in the markup

Again, zombie.js uses jsdom internally and it might be a better starting point.

Answer 2

There are two options for this

1. Your testing browser code. Run it in the browser. Emulating the browser doesn't proof your code works, at all.
2. Use a tool like phantom / zombie

Of course there are alternatives to this, you can extract any non-browser related code, write a unit test suite for them and run it in node. It's just JavaScript.

You can also use managed services like testling to run your browser tests for you