grunt-mocha-test
A grunt task for running server side mocha tests
Usage
Install next to your project's Gruntfile.js with:
npm install grunt-mocha-test --save-dev
Running tests
Here is a simple example gruntfile if you just want to run tests
module.exports = function(grunt) {
// Add the grunt-mocha-test tasks.
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-mocha-test');
grunt.initConfig({
// Configure a mochaTest task
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', 'mochaTest');
};
The following mocha options are supported
- grep
- ui
- reporter
- timeout
- invert
- ignoreLeaks
- growl
- globals
- bail
- require
- colors (specify as "colors: true")
- slow
Specifying compilers
The Mocha --compilers
option is almost identical to the --require
option but with additional functionality for use with the Mocha --watch
mode. As the --watch
mode is not relevant for this plugin there is no need to implement a separate compilers
option and actually the require
option should be used instead.
The following example shows the use of the CoffeeScript compiler.
npm install coffee-script
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
require: 'coffee-script/register'
},
src: ['test/**/*.coffee']
}
}
In order to make this more user friendly, the require
option can take either a single file/function or an array of files/functions in case you have other globals you wish to require.
eg.
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
require: [
'coffee-script/register',
'./globals.js',
function(){ testVar1=require('./stuff'); },
function(){ testVar2='other-stuff'; }
]
},
src: ['test/**/*.coffee']
}
}
NB. File references for the require
option can only be used with Javascript files, ie. it is not possible to specify a ./globals.coffee
in the above example.
Specifying a Mocha module
If you would like to use a different version of Mocha than the one packaged with this plugin, you can specify the module with the mocha
option:
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
mocha: require('mocha')
},
src: ['test/**/*.coffee']
}
}
Generating coverage reports
Here is an example gruntfile that registers 2 test tasks, 1 to run the tests and 1 to generate a coverage report using blanket.js
to instrument the javascript on the fly.
npm install blanket
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-mocha-test');
grunt.initConfig({
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
// Require blanket wrapper here to instrument other required
// files on the fly.
//
// NB. We cannot require blanket directly as it
// detects that we are not running mocha cli and loads differently.
//
// NNB. As mocha is 'clever' enough to only run the tests once for
// each file the following coverage task does not actually run any
// tests which is why the coverage instrumentation has to be done here
require: 'coverage/blanket'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
},
coverage: {
options: {
reporter: 'html-cov',
// use the quiet flag to suppress the mocha console output
quiet: true,
// specify a destination file to capture the mocha
// output (the quiet option does not suppress this)
captureFile: 'coverage.html'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', 'mochaTest');
};
As noted above it is necessary to wrap the blanket require when calling mocha programatically so coverage/blanket.js
should look something like this.
var path = require('path');
var srcDir = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'src');
require('blanket')({
// Only files that match the pattern will be instrumented
pattern: srcDir
});
This will preprocess all .js
files in the src
directory. Note that Blanket
just uses pattern matching so this rework of the paths prevents files in node_modules
being instrumented too. Also bear in mind using Blanket
to instrument files on the fly only works if the file is not already in the require cache (this is an odd case but if you can't figure out why a file is not instrumented and the pattern
looks ok then this may be the cause).
Failing tests if a coverage threshold is not reached
Building on the previous example, if you wish to have your tests fail if it falls below a certain coverage threshold then I advise using the travis-cov
reporter
npm install travis-cov
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-mocha-test');
grunt.initConfig({
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
require: 'coverage/blanket'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
},
'html-cov': {
options: {
reporter: 'html-cov',
quiet: true,
captureFile: 'coverage.html'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
},
// The travis-cov reporter will fail the tests if the
// coverage falls below the threshold configured in package.json
'travis-cov': {
options: {
reporter: 'travis-cov'
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', 'mochaTest');
};
Don't forget to update package.json
with options for travis-cov
, for example:
...
"config": {
"travis-cov": {
// Yes, I like to set the coverage threshold to 100% ;)
"threshold": 100
}
},
...
Instrumenting source files with coverage data before running tests
In most cases it may be more useful to instrument files before running tests. This has the added advantage of creating intermediate files that will match the line numbers reported in exception reports. Here is one possible Gruntfile.js
that uses the grunt-blanket
plug in.
npm install grunt-contrib-clean
npm install grunt-contrib-copy
npm install grunt-blanket
npm install travis-cov
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-mocha-test');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-clean');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-copy');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-blanket');
grunt.initConfig({
clean: {
coverage: {
src: ['coverage/']
}
},
copy: {
coverage: {
src: ['test/**'],
dest: 'coverage/'
}
},
blanket: {
coverage: {
src: ['src/'],
dest: 'coverage/src/'
}
},
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
},
src: ['/coverage/test/**/*.js']
},
coverage: {
options: {
reporter: 'html-cov',
quiet: true,
captureFile: 'coverage.html'
},
src: ['/coverage/test/**/*.js']
},
'travis-cov': {
options: {
reporter: 'travis-cov'
},
src: ['/coverage/test/**/*.js']
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', ['clean', 'blanket', 'copy', 'mochaTest']);
};
This will delete any previously instrumented files, copy the test
files to a coverage
folder and instrument the src
javascript files to the coverage
folder. Lastly it runs tests from the coverage
folder. It's more complicated but often easier to work with.
Running in permanent environments (like watch)
If you run grunt-mocha-test
with grunt-contrib-watch
using the spawn: false
option, you will notice that the tests only run on the first change. Subsequent changes will result in an empty report with a 0 passing
message.
This happens because mocha
loads your tests using require
resulting in them being added to the require cache. Thus once they have been loaded in a process the subsequent calls to require
hit the cache without executing the code again. To prevent this from happening, use the clearRequireCache
option (default value is false
).
Here is an example that also demonstrates how to only run changed tests:
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-mocha-test');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');
grunt.initConfig({
mochaTest: {
test: {
options: {
reporter: 'spec',
clearRequireCache: true
},
src: ['test/**/*.js']
},
},
watch: {
js: {
options: {
spawn: false,
},
files: '**/*.js',
tasks: ['default']
}
}
});
// On watch events, if the changed file is a test file then configure mochaTest to only
// run the tests from that file. Otherwise run all the tests
var defaultTestSrc = grunt.config('mochaTest.test.src');
grunt.event.on('watch', function(action, filepath) {
grunt.config('mochaTest.test.src', defaultTestSrc);
if (filepath.match('test/')) {
grunt.config('mochaTest.test.src', filepath);
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', 'mochaTest');
};
Using node flags
There are some flags that Mocha supports that are actually Node flags, eg.
- --debug
- --harmony-generators
It is currently not possible to set these at runtime when using Mocha as a library and as such cannot be supported by grunt-mocha-test
without a major refactor (and severe impact on performance as it would involve spawning processes).
The recommended way of using these flags would be to pass them to node when starting the grunt process. The simplest way to do this would be to leverage the scripts
functionality of NPM and package.json
.
...
},
"scripts": {
"test": "node --debug --harmony-generators ./node_modules/.bin/grunt test"
}
...
The tests would then be run using
npm test
Note that this assumes that grunt-cli
has been installed locally and not globally
Contributing
In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using:
npm test
License
Copyright © 2014 Peter Halliday
Licensed under the MIT license.