Javascript

JavaScript is a prototype-based, object-oriented scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is also considered a functional programming language like Scheme and OCaml because it has closures and supports higher-order functions. Cool language isn’t? A new feeling inside me tells me that everything (related to I.T.) I would like to learn I should start writing a tests. However I thought that JavaScript test was stucked on Alert windows and then I found out Jasmine framework.

How could we write tests to JavaScript?

Using Jasmine in a BDD style.

describe("Jasmine", function() {
  it("makes testing JavaScript awesome!", function() {
    expect(yourCode).toBeLotsBetter();
  });
});

To run it and get feedback you have some options whose I take two: seeing the html file on browser and seeing the terminal result as rspec way. We will do the second way. For that we will use: node.js, npm and jessie.

node.js – evented i/o server (and also you can use it as an interpreter) for javascript vm (specifically v8)
Installing node.js

git clone --depth 1 git://github.com/joyent/node.git
cd node
git checkout v0.4.11 #opt, note that master is unstable.
export JOBS=2 #opt, sets number of parallel commands.
mkdir ~/local
./configure --prefix=$HOME/local/node
make
make install
echo 'export PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export NODE_PATH=$HOME/local/node:$HOME/local/node/lib/node_modules' >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

npm – node package manager, as its own name suggest. You can use it to install and publish your node programs. It manages dependencies and does other cool stuff.
Installing npm.

curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

jessie – Jessie is a Node runner for Jasmine. It was created to provide better reporting on failures, more modular design, easier creation of formatters and optional syntactic sugar.
Installing jessie.

npm install jessie

With all these binaries on your path you can just run your tests from terminal typing:

jessie folder_with_specs/ -f nested

In fact I’ve been using the gitub and jessie to learn and apply javascript.