README

@wistoft/javi

JavaScript View is tool for running test cases and scripts. Everything is presented in the browser, so no CLI needed for running neither test cases nor scripts.

TypeScript by default.
Javi is intended to be agnostic to test framework. One could even use several. All test results are presented in the same view. However, it only suppports a new framework called Jarun, for now.

Installation

yarn add --dev @wistoft/javi

npm i --save-dev @wistoft/javi

Usage

Create a configuration file in the root of your project.
Run yarn javi or npm javi depending on your installation.
Open a browser at http://localhost:3003
Explore how the view works.

Development server

A development server is just a script. It's started and reloaded by javi, when source files change.
Output and errors from the server can be shown on the development site, by using JagoConsole (an extension to JadevConsole)

Configuration

Javi reads a configuration file from the working directory: javi.conf.js.

Example configuration file

module.exports = {
  //Folder containing test cases.
  testFolder: "packages/tests",

  //This prefix is removed in stack traces.
  //It's relative to position of configuration file.
  removePathPrefix: "packages",

  //Scripts in this folder can be executed in javi > scripts.
  scriptFolders: ["packages/dev/scripts/"],

  //Declaration of individual scripts
  scripts: [
    {
      script: "packages/dev/devServerMain.ts",
      autoStart: true,
      autoRestart: true,
    },
  ],
};

How it works

Jacs is used to transpile TypeScript for both test cases and scripts. It transpiles and caches results in the same process javi runs in. When a new worker thread starts, it can receive the cached source files through shared memory.
Changes in test files or files they import are detected by WatchableProcess. Javi kills processes with old code, and restarts executing test cases, so test results are always from running on a consistent codebase. I.e. it's guaranteed that no file used by the test case changed during execution.

Limitations

Test cases must be placed in a separate folder. Tests in subfolders are included. subfolders prefixed _ are ignored.
TypeScript is only be transpiled. This could be viewed as beneficial, actually. Because one can execute test cases, even if there are type errors. That's useful some times.
- It's beneficial the make a vscode task to compile TypeScript, and show errors in vscode. A vscode task is the best way to get type errors, because they are reported where they occur in source code.
Everything happens in Worker Threads, because it's hard to get cached transpile results efficiently into another process.

Known issues

The configuration can't be in TypeScript, yet.
List of scripts are not updated, when scripts are added/deleted. And subfolders in script folders are handled buggy.
Open files from browser is hardcoded to vscode. On windows.
Open files for merge is hardcoded to WinMerge.
Test paths are ignored. So 'path/test.ja.js' has same test log file as 'other/path/test.ja.js'

Future work

Make it possible to use other testing frameworks.

License

MIT

@wistoft/javideprecated

Usage no npm install needed!