github-migration/jasmine-headless-webkit

John Bintz b66897993a add guard info

2011-05-24 06:46:00 -04:00

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title	layout
jasmine-headless-webkit -- The fastest way to run your Jasmine specs!	default

Jasmine Headless WebKit

Run your Jasmine specs at sonic boom speed!

[Jasmine](http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/) is great. I love it. But running Jasmine when you need to test code that will run in a browser environment can be problematic and slow:

The Jasmine gem's server makes getting up and testing very fast, but F5-ing your browser for each test run is distracting.
Jasmine CI uses Selenium, which speeds up the process a bit, but you're still rendering pixels in a browser, albeit with the option of rendering those pixels in a lot of different browsers at once.
Node.js, EnvJS, and Rhino solutions for running Jasmine are great for anything that will never run in a real browser. I'm a big believer of running code destined for a browser in a browser itself, not a simulator.

But there's a solution for fast, accurate browser-based testing, using one of the most popular browser cores, and it dovetails perfectly into the Jasmine gem's already established protocols.

Enter `jasmine-headless-webkit`

jasmine-headless-webkit uses the Qt WebKit widget to run your specs without needing to render a pixel. It's nearly as fast as running in a JavaScript engine like Node.js, and, since it's a real browser environment, all the modules you would normally use, like jQuery and Backbone, work without any modifications. If you write your tests correctly, they'll even work when running in the Jasmine gem's server with no changes to your code.

jasmine-headless-webkit also streamlines your workflow in other ways:

It integrates with Autotest and can easily be used with watchr to automate the running of your tests during development.
It compiles CoffeeScript, both for your tests and for your application logic.
It can be configured like RSpec, and its output is very similar to RSpec's output, so you don't need to learn too much new stuff to use and integrate it.

How do I use this wonderful toy?

You can use it standalone:

gem install jasmine-headless-webkit

Or you can use it with Bundler:

gem 'jasmine-headless-webkit'

However you install it, you'll get a jasmine-headless-webkit executable. You'll also need to set up your project to use the Jasmine gem:

gem install jasmine
jasmine init

What do I need to get it working?

Installation requires Qt 4.7. The Internets will tell you how to get that for your particular environment. jasmine-headless-webkit has been tested in the following environments:

Mac OS X 10.6, with MacPorts Qt and Nokia Qt.mpkg
Kubuntu 10.10

If it works in yours, leave me a message on GitHub or fork this site and add your setup.

How does it work?

jasmine-headless-webkit generates a static HTML file that includes the Jasmine JavaScript library from the Jasmine gem, your application and spec files, and any helpers you may need. The runner then creates a WebKit widget that loads the HTML file, runs the tests, and grabs the results of the test to show back to you. Awesome!

jasmine-headless-webkit uses the same jasmine.yml file that the Jasmine gem uses to define where particular files for the testing process are located:

{% highlight yaml %} src_files:

public/assets/common.js
public/assets/templates.js
public/javascripts/models/**/*.js
public/javascripts/collections/**/*.js
public/javascripts/views/**/*.js
app/coffeescripts/models/**/*.coffee
app/coffeescripts/collections/**/*.coffee
app/coffeescripts/views/**/*.coffee helpers:
helpers/**/*.{js,coffee} spec_files:
"**/*[Ss]pec.{js,coffee}" src_dir: spec_dir: spec/javascripts {% endhighlight %}

It also brings in the same copy of the Jasmine library that the Jasmine gem includes, so if you're testing in both environments, you're guaranteed to get the same results in your tests.

`*.coffee` in my `jasmine.yml` file?!

Yes, jasmine-headless-webkit will support *.coffee files in jasmine.yml, which the normal Jasmine server currently does not support out of the box. Once there's official support, you'll be able to easily switch between jasmine-headless-webkit and the Jasmine test server when you're using CoffeeScript. CoffeeScript files are compiled and injected into the generated HTML files.

Never done Jasmine in CoffeeScript? It looks like this:

{% highlight coffeescript %} describe 'Component', -> describe 'StorylineNode', -> model = null

beforeEach ->
  model = new ComponentStorylineNode({id: 1})

it 'should not be new', ->
  expect(model.isNew()).toEqual(false)

{% endhighlight %}

...and it turns into this...

{% highlight js %} describe('Component', function() { return describe('StorylineNode', function() { var model; model = null; beforeEach(function() { return model = new ComponentStorylineNode({ id: 1 }); }); return it('should not be new', function() { return expect(model.isNew()).toEqual(false); }); }); }); {% endhighlight %}

Server interaction

Since there's no Jasmine server running, there's no way to grab test files from the filesystem via Ajax. If you need to test server interaction, do one of the following:

Stub your server responses using Sinon.JS.
Use PhantomJS against a running copy of a Jasmine server, instead of this project.

What else works?

alert() and confirm() work, though the latter always returns true. You should be mocking calls to confirm(), of course:

{% highlight js %} spyOn(window, 'confirm').andReturn(false) {% endhighlight %}

console.log() also works, though it's just a wrapper around JSON.stringify(). This means that cyclical objects, like HTML elements, can't be directly serialized (yet). Use jQuery to help you retrieve the HTML:

{% highlight js %} console.log($('#element').parent().html()) {% endhighlight %}

Running the runner

{% highlight bash %} jasmine-headless-webkit [ -c / --colors ] [ --no-colors ] [ --keep ] [ -j / --jasmine-config ] {% endhighlight %}

The runner will return one of three exit codes:

0 means your tests passed sucessfully.
1 means you had a failure in your tests.
2 means your tests passed, but you used console.log() somewhere.

Setting default options

Much like RSpec, you can define the default options for each run of the runner. Place your global options into a ~/.jasmine-headless-webkit file and your per-project settings in a .jasmine-headless-webkit file at the root of the project.

Coloring the output

jasmine-headless-webkit will not color output by default. This makes it easier to integrate with CI servers. If you want colored output, use the -c flag. With colored output, your tests will look like this:

If you have colors turned on globally, you can turn them off per-project or per-run with --no-colors.

Preserving compiled output on errors

CoffeeScript logic errors can be hard to track down. Keep the generated HTML files with the --keep flag and you'll get specrunner.$$.html files in your working directory.

Using a different `jasmine.yml` file

If for some reason you're not using the default path for a jasmine.yml file (which is spec/javascripts/support/jasmine.yml), you can provide that path with -j.

Running only certain spec files

By default, if no files are passed into jasmine-headless-webkit, all possible spec files in the spec_files definition will be run. You can limit the run to only certain files by passing those to jasmine-headless-webkit:

{% highlight bash %} jasmine-headless-webkit spec/javascripts/models/node_viewer.coffee {% endhighlight %}

Automated testing during development

jasmine-headless-webkit works best when it's running all the time, re-running tests when you update the appropriate files. Support for Autotest is built-in. All you need to do is create a .jasmine-headless-webkit file in your project directory and Autotest will pick up that you want to use it for Jasmine. (this only works by itself or with RSpec at the moment)

If you use Guard, which I just switched to doing, install guard-jasmine-headless-webkit and run guard init jasmine-headless-webkit to add the necessary bits to your Guardfile to test a Rails 3.1 (or a well-structured Rails 3.0) app.

You can also use it with watchr, if you're so inclined. Here's the watchr script I use to run both RSpec and jasmine-headless-webkit.

Rake tasks

You can create a Rake task for your headless Jasmine specs:

{% highlight ruby %} require 'jasmine/headless/task'

Jasmine::Headless::Task.new('jasmine:headless') do |t| t.colors = true t.keep_on_error = true t.jasmine_config = 'this/is/the/path.yml' end {% endhighlight %}

If you've bundled jasmine-headless-webkit in with Rails, you'll also get a basic task for running your Jasmine specs. Be sure to include the gem in the development group so you get with a normal call to rake -T:

{% highlight ruby %} group :test, :development do gem 'jasmine-headless-webkit' end {% endhighlight %}

# rake -T

rake jasmine:headless     # Run Jasmine specs headlessly

This is the same as running jasmine-headless-webkit -c.

I have a problem or helpful suggestion, good sir.

Here's what you can do:

Leave a ticket on the Issues tracker.
Fork'n'fix the code. Feel free to add a bunch of tests, too. I cowboyed this project when starting it, and I'm slowly getting back to being a good boy.
Ping me on Twitter or on GitHub.

Credits & License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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