node-stories

Lightweight Given/When/Then/And/But blocks with async-support for Node.js.

The basics

Node-stories uses the same kind of metaprogramming most other JavaScript testing suites are using. A silly example:

process.mixin(require('./story'));

new Feature('Using an Array as a queue', function () {
    var assert = require("assert");

    Given('An empty Array', function () {
        a = []
    })
    When('I add some elements', function () {
        a.push(1)
        a.push(2)
        a.push(3)
        a.push(4)
    })
    And('I shift an element off the Array', function () {
        element = a.shift()
    })
    Then('I should get the first element from the Array', function () {
        assert.equal(element, 1)
    })
    And('I should have the remaining elements left', function () {
        assert.equal(a.length, 3)
    })
    But('I should not have the shifted element left', function () {
        a.forEach(function (e) { assert.notEqual(e, element) })
    })
})

Now when you run this:

node my_feature.js

Then you should see in your terminal:

Feature: Using an Array as a queue

  Given An empty Array
  When I add some elements
  And I shift an element off the Array
  Then I should get the first element from the Array
  And I should have the remaining elements left

Obviously, this is colorized and always displays the errors together with each failing step.

Async DSL

Node-story has a human-readable DSL for deferring evaluation of steps until a step specifying asynchronous behavior has completed or, optionally, timed-out. Nothing of this pollutes the global namespace and node-stories uses some fancy accessor trickery to keep things readable:

Define how many passes are expected:

• await(5).passes
• await(1).pass

Optionally you can define a timeout (in milliseconds):

• await(6).passes.withTimeout(2500)

Emit a passed test:

• passed

Emit a failed test:

• failed

Note: failed will automatically display the error object passed to the callback, eg. by addErrback(), and display.

Async Features

Using the async helpers, node-stories will synchronously run your features:

new Feature('A passing, async feature', function () {
    var emitter;
    Given('An event emitter', function () {
        emitter = new process.EventEmitter()
    })
    And('A timed, emitted success', function () {
        setTimeout(function () { emitter.emit('success') }, 1500)
    })
    Then('This step will wait until the block has finished', function () {
        await(1).pass
        emitter.addListener('success', function () {
            passed
        })
    })
    And("This step won't run any earlier", function () {
        // Do some more assertions here.
    })
})

More examples

Have a look into the examples/ directory (which, before you ask, are also used for testing node-stories).

What about deep nesting?

Deep nesting is currently not supported by node-stories. A Feature should describe one thing in the most concise way possible and deep nesting should not be neccessary. At least that is my style. However, if you fancy support for nesting, feel free to fork and send me a pull request.

And what about matchers?

Node-stories is matcher independent. You can use Node's built-in assert module or the matchers of your favorite unit-test/spec suite. As long as they throw errors on failed assertions, just like the assert module, everything (the console output) should be fine.

Contributions

I wrote this so I can add some simple integration tests to some of the projects I am currently working on. However, feature requests and contributions are of course welcome.

License

• The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2009 Tobias Svensson (tobiassvn@googlemail.com)

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.