Book Image

Test-Driven JavaScript Development

By : Ravi Kumar Gupta
Book Image

Test-Driven JavaScript Development

By: Ravi Kumar Gupta

Overview of this book

Initially, all processing used to happen on the server-side and simple output was the response to web browsers. Nowadays, there are so many JavaScript frameworks and libraries created that help readers to create charts, animations, simulations, and so on. By the time a project finishes or reaches a stable state, so much JavaScript code has already been written that changing and maintaining it further is tedious. Here comes the importance of automated testing and more specifically, developing all that code in a test-driven environment. Test-driven development is a methodology that makes testing the central part of the design process – before writing code developers decide upon the conditions that code must meet to pass a test. The end goal is to help the readers understand the importance and process of using TDD as a part of development. This book starts with the details about test-driven development, its importance, need, and benefits. Later the book introduces popular tools and frameworks like YUI, Karma, QUnit, DalekJS, JsUnit and goes on to utilize Jasmine, Mocha, Karma for advanced concepts like feature detection, server-side testing, and patterns. We are going to understand, write, and run tests, and further debug our programs. The book concludes with best practices in JavaScript testing. By the end of the book, the readers will know why they should test, how to do it most efficiently, and will have a number of versatile tests (and methods for devising new tests) to get to work immediately.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Test-Driven JavaScript Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Agile and TDD


When we talk about TDD, Agile is most often discussed. Sometimes, people have doubts about whether Agile can exist without TDD or not. Well, of course it can, though. Agile and some people would say that TDD is Agile at a bigger scale. Through TDD, both show similar characteristics, but they are different. Agile is a process where testing is done as soon as a component is developed. It's not necessary in Agile to write test cases first and then perform development. But in the case of TDD, a test is always written first, and then its corresponding minimal production code.

TDD is about how code should be written while Agile is about the whole development process, not just code and its testing. Agile does not tell you how to build the system. Agile methodology is a management process, which can use TDD as an integral part.

Agile, when combined in practice with TDD, brings the best results. This combination minimizes risks, defects, cost, and results in a nearly zero-defect system.