Ask HN: How do you test web UI/JavaScript?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5758046

by smarterchild • 13 years ago

13 7 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We just set up QUnit, and it was kind of a difficult Google-fest to get working. On the UI side however, I haven't touched a UI framework since Selenium a while back.

What do you use to test UI/UX on the web?

sandeep45• 13 years ago

if you are looking to do unit tests, jasmine is definitely worth looking at. https://github.com/pivotal/jasmine

jfaucett• 13 years ago

To put it bluntly from my perspective, testing js is pretty much hell. Don't get me wrong, it does depend on the context though. For example, if I'm building a jQuery plugin or my own pure js libraries then qunit is in my opinion the best solution and it does a great job - I'd recommend it :).

But once you start to have to test large applications where the server side app and javascript are intertwined, you start running into lots of problems. I'm just guessing but I think this is the case for most devs that really want to test their javascript. Most arent building a library they're using one, they're also probably not building one page apps that are pure javascript, more like components that are getting integrated into larger (existing) applications. And personally, I haven't been able to find a solution that works well without tons of annoying headaches, that are often more trouble than clicking through your app in various browsers and os's for a day. So if anyone has found a solution i would love to hear about it PLEASE! :)

Right now you can try selenium (I personally don't like it, but wont go into it here), then you can also try something like phantomjs (or another headless browser), but this wont let you test IE at all, which usually defeats almost the whole point. Also you're most likely going to run into problems dealing with context, because your javascript is being inserted into the testing browser inside the test suite context (long story but I've had problems here too). Capybara has problems with testing async js, but you could try it. In summary its just a pain, I wish someone had a solution too but I unfortunately dont.

smarterchild• 13 years ago

Do you do testing by hand now?

kevinSuttle• 13 years ago

Zombie.js on Node is a good option. A book has been written about it at PacktPub.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1782160523/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

cjbprime• 13 years ago

http://theintern.io/ looks very interesting, haven't used it yet.

noginn• 13 years ago

My team started off with QUnit but switched to Mocha a while back for unit testing our JavaScript. The tests run in the browser or using Node.js (on the build server).

We've dabbled with BusterJS as an alternative when needing to run the tests in multiple browsers/devices.

Also used Selenium/Sahi on occasion for acceptance tests. We need to test on lots of mobile devices so this helped speed things up a little when using the Android WebDriver and Appium.

I still don't feel like we've found the holy grail of JavaScript/UI testing. A mixture seems to works best for us. Unit test what we can and using Selenium/Sahi when testing browser/device inconsistencies are important.

larsthorup• 13 years ago

I write JavaScript unit tests using QUnit on one project and Jasmine on another. I can run thoses tests in a browser when debugging, and from the command line for continuous integration. Unit tests are fast and much more robust than Selenium tests. On one project we curently run 800 Jasmine tests in less than 20 seconds. I have written a series of blog posts on the continuous integration side of front-end JavaScript unit testing: http://www.zealake.com/2012/12/25/run-all-your-javascript-qu...

Ask HN: How do you test web UI/JavaScript?

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