Chapter 1, Web Application Testing in the Modern Web, is an introduction to modern web development, showing how important the testing of increasingly complex applications is. In particular, it shows how the classic client-side development based on jQuery is no longer the best solution when unit testing becomes one of the pillars of the implementation strategy. Also, it suggests that a new design approach is needed, based on a JavaScript MV presentation design pattern.

Chapter 2, The Knockout.JS UI Framework Explained, covers the most important features of Knockout.JS, which is the most well-known JavaScript presentation pattern based on Model-View-ViewModel. It also shows how to effectively use this library in a web application and why this is a good choice in terms of unit testing and application design.

Chapter 3, The Jasmine Unit Testing Framework Explained, covers the most important features of Jasmine, a very well-known JavaScript unit testing framework, based on the Behavior Driven Development approach.

Chapter 4, Unit Testing Strategies, is the core chapter of the book. It shows how to strategically deal with the development of a JavaScript web application when unit testing plays a major role. It suggests some important design principles and approaches when developing a sample web application that uses Knockout.JS as the presentation framework and Jasmine for unit testing.

Chapter 5, Setting Up an Effective Testing Environment, shows how to set up an automated testing environment based on Gulp.JS and Karma; the first is a Node.JS module that acts as a task automation system, and the second is a test runner system. It covers the steps needed to install, configure, and execute all of the system components, including unit testing reports and code coverage. It also shows how to directly test the user interface using Phantom.JS and its page automation capabilities.

This book talks about web application testing. Every piece of code is written in HTML5/JavaScript/CSS3. So basically, you simply need a text editor and modern browser. In particular, the requirements are as follows:

Web App Testing Using Knockout.JS is intended for every type of JavaScript developers, from experts to beginners, who want to improve their quality standards in terms of solutions design and features correctness. Experts who already know JavaScript design patterns and unit testing can find a valid reference to put everything together in a comprehensive working framework. Beginners who barely know how to manipulate an HTML page with a multipurpose library such as jQuery can find a step-by-step introduction manual that covers all aspects of a delivery process. In general, a basic understanding of web development, HTML, and JavaScript is required.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We put the script tags just before the closing body tag for performance reasons."

A block of code is set as follows:

this.myModule = (function (module) {
    module.MyClass = function () {
      //MyClass definition
    }
    return module;
}(this.myModule || {})); 

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<p>
   <span>Slider value:</span>
   &nbsp;
   <span id="sliderValue"></span>
   &nbsp;
    <button id="sliderReset">Reset</button>
</p> 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

npm install -g gulp 

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "In the first one, we activate or disable the drop-down menu, whether or not the Foreign radio option is checked."

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