nodebase

This is my boilerplate for when I start a new node.js project. I clone this repository and start from there.

You put your code in the lib folder. I recommend an editor that you can configure to run JSHint for you while you are editing your JavaScript files. I use WebStorm.

The main advantage of cloning this repository is that it comes with a working test-setup and runs JSHint as well as all the tests. This can be a pain to set up if you are new to node.

Test setup

• mocha is the test framework
• sinon is used for mocks and spies
• chai is used for assertions
• sinon-chai is used for better assertions of sinon

Test files

The project it set up to have tests in the test folder.

There is an example test in test/unit/globals.spec.js.

I usually put my unit tests in test/unit and my integration tests in test/integration, and create other folders in test/ for other classes of tests.

BDD style

The tests are set to use BDD-style, and use the dot reporter. These options can be changed in the file test/mocha.opts

Global variables when testing

The following global variables are defined for testing:

• expect for assertions
• sinon for mocking and spies
• _ the JavaScript helper library underscore
• injectr for mocking out require statements
• request library for making HTTP requests to your API in integration tests

You can alter globals for testing in the file test/common.js

JSHint

JSHint is set up to verify all the JavaScript files in the folders lib. bin and test.

You can add more directories in the bin/runTests.js file.

You can specify what JSHint options to use in the file .jshintrc

You can specify specific files or directories for JSHint to ignore in the file .jshintignore

Running tests

After you do npm install you just run the command

npm test

to run all tests.

In the Webstorm editor you can also set up a run configuration and point it at bin/runTests.js to run tests.

Running a subset of tests

If you want to run a subset of tests, you can modify the file tests/mocha.opts and add the line

--grep myTestFilter

At the top, here is the mocha explanation of --grep

The --grep option when specified will trigger mocha to only run tests matching the given pattern which is internally compiled to a RegExp.

Suppose for example you have “api” related tests, as well as “app” related tests, as shown in the following snippet; One could use --grep api or --grep app to run one or the other. The same goes for any other part of a suite or test-case title, --grep users would be valid as well, or even --grep GET.

describe('api', function(){
  describe('GET /api/users', function(){
    it('respond with an array of users')
  });
});

describe('app', function(){
  describe('GET /users', function(){
    it('respond with an array of users')
  });
});