I’ve recently started delving into the world of Javascript. I’ve developed in Javascript briefly in various Rails project and other front end project but I never really got too deep into it. I’m required to add some Ajax functionality to my Tic tac toe so this is a great opportunity to learn how to test drive javascript code and at the same time improve my knowledge of the language and the world.

First of all….

What is Karma?

A test runner for Javascript, it increasing productivity by running tests any time there’s a file change. It’s completely testing framework agnostic enabling the use of a framework as Jasmine, Mocha etc. It’s even used by Google.

What is Jasmine

A testing framework very much like RSpec, if we were to look at the two the similarities are clear.

The first example is in Ruby, the second is in Javascript.

  describe RomanNumerals do
      it 'convert arabic to roman' do
        result = RomanNumerals.convert(1)
        expect(result).to eq "I"
      end
  end
describe('convert arabic to roman', function() {
  it('converts 1 to I', function() {
    expect(convert(1)).toBe("I");
  });
});

I’ve grown fond of Behaviour driven development, so when I’m learning new languages, I naturally gravitate to the languages BDD testing framework. I did the same thing when learning Clojure.

Installing Karam and Jasmine

The recommended approach is to install Karma (and all the plugins your project needs) locally in the project’s directory.

$ npm install karma --save-dev
$ npm install jasmine --save-dev

That’s it really. You could also install the two globally by adding “-g” option on the npm command.

Vim plugin

I found the following plugin useful for Javascript development in vim.

‘pangloss/vim-javascript’ Improves JS syntax highlighting and improves indentation.

If anyone has other plugins for a more productive Javascript environment, please let me know.

Ced