sirrobert-test-vows v1.3.7

Rationale

This is a thin wrapper around vows. I didn't like how verbose vows is, but I like the async features.

Installation

Local installation

npm install --save sirrobert-test-vows

Global installation

npm install --global sirrobert-test-vows

Usage

Comparison with Vows

For a full description of vows, you should check out the vows website. Here's a brief comparison, though.

The vows site gives a brief example of testing some division by zero errors:

// division-by-zero-test.js

var vows = require('vows'),
    assert = require('assert');

// Create a Test Suite
vows.describe('Division by Zero').addBatch({
    'when dividing a number by zero': {
        topic: function () { return 42 / 0 },

        'we get Infinity': function (topic) {
            assert.equal (topic, Infinity);
        }
    },
    'but when dividing zero by zero': {
        topic: function () { return 0 / 0 },

        'we get a value which': {
            'is not a number': function (topic) {
                assert.isNaN (topic);
            },
            'is not equal to itself': function (topic) {
                assert.notEqual (topic, topic);
            }
        }
    }
}).run(); // Run it

Here's the same thing using this DSL. I've left the same comments so it doesn't get shorter for cheaty reasons.

// division-by-zero-test.js

var Test = require("sirrobert-test-vows");

// Create a Test Suite
new Test(
  "Division by Zero",
  { when: "dividing a number by zero",
    using: () => 42/0,
    "we get Infinity": result => Test.is.equal(result, Infinity)
  },
  { when: "dividing zero by zero",
    using: () => 0/0,
    "we get a value which": {
      "is not a number":        result => Test.it.isNaN(result),
      "is not equal to itself": result => Test.is.notEqual(result,result),
    }
  }
).run(module); // Run it

In my opinion, this is much more readable. Mainly because I don't relate to the "vows", "topic", "batch" language in vows, but also because it reads approximately like a sentence:

Test
  "blah blah"

    when "blah blah"
    using <some method>
    "result 1" <by this means>,
    "result 2" <by this means>,
    "result 3" <by this means>,

    when "blah blah"
    using <some method>
    "result 1" <by this means>,
    "result 2" <by this means>,
    "result 3" <by this means>,

Sugar

This module also smuggles in node's assert module so you don't have to import it yourself. You can, of course. There's some sugar to make it a little sweeter: you can write short sentences with the module for your assertions.

Test.is(...);
Test.is.equal(...);
Test.is.StrictEqual(...);
Test.it.doesNotThrow(...);
Test.does.fail(...);

all three objects (.is, .it, and .does) are just synonyms for the assert module. That means these are all exactly equivalent:

Test.is.equal(...);
Test.it.equal(...);
Test.does.equal(...);

... and so on for all other assert features.

How it Works

Dead simple, it just takes the data structure provided here and re-arranges it slightly to be the vows infrastructure. The source is a couple dozen lines, so reading that will probably be an easier way to understand it.