Velocity
Test runner (and community) for Meteor apps. Under heavy development.
What is Velocity?
Head over to the official homepage
Find out more by watching the Intro to Velocity talk that Robert, Sam, and Mike did at the June 2014 Meteor Devshop!
Read more in the free chapter on Velocity in The Meteor Testing Manual
Getting Started
The Velocity package itself is not something that you include, rather you use Velocity-compatible framework.
To see frameworks in action, have a look at the velocity-examples repository.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes things break and its useful to get more debugging info. Most of the test frameworks support some kind of debugging environment variable flag. You can usually see a lot more details about what's happening if you run your app with this command:
$ DEBUG=1 JASMINE_DEBUG=1 VELOCITY_DEBUG=1 VELOCITY_DEBUG_MIRROR=1 meteor
Reporting bugs
Please report bugs directly on the issues of the framework(s) you are using. Framework authors will then post issues to the core if they are core issues.
##Velocity Compatible Packages
Frameworks
Below is a list of the currently available frameworks.
Most of these frameworks have an example in the velocity-examples repository, and have a set of sample tests that can be added to your project.
- sanjo:jasmine - Write client and server unit and integration tests with Jasmine.
- mike:mocha - A Velocity version of mocha-web. Runs mocha tests in the Meteor context which is great for integration testing.
- xolvio:cucumber - Use BDD Gherkin-syntax cucumber to test your app. Includes PhantomJS and Selenium as well as SauceLabs support.
- rsbatech:robotframework - Robot Framework end to end test integration using Selenium and many other test libraries
A lot more information on these frameworks can be found on the Velocity website and in their respective repositories.
These frameworks are no longer maintained since Velocity v0.6.0
- clinical:nightwatch - run acceptance tests with automated browsers using the Nightwatch bridge to Selenium
- nblazer:casperjs - CasperJS end to end test integration
Reporters
Reporters display test results.
- velocity:html-reporter - Adds an overlay to your app indicating test success/failure (green/red dot in top right). Click dot for test details.
meteor add velocity:html-reporter
- velocity:console-reporter - Reports test run results to the console.
meteor add velocity:console-reporter
Mirrors
Mirrors are used by test frameworks to run tests within. Tests are typically destructive and as such require a different database. Mirrors run a parallel version of your app with a different database as not to intrude on the main development workflow.
Other
- xolvio:webdriver - Adds webdriver.io to any test framework for UI testing. Uses PhantomJS in GhostDriver mode for ultra-fast UI testing
Test Framework Authors
We would love to add your framework to the list! Take a look at how some of these interface with velocity and let us know about your framework on the velocity-core google group.
Please see the velocity-wiki for basic instructions on making your test framework work with Velocity.
Also, be sure to check out the documentation for the public API.
A few notes on being velocity-compatible:
Register testing framework to Velocity
Use Velocity.registerTestingFramework(frameworkName, options)
to register your package as testing framework. You can find a description of the expected arguments in the docs.
Sample Tests
Please put some sample tests in a directory named sample-tests
at the root of your package.
These will be used by the velocity-quick-start package and also allows users to click a button
in the html-reporter to have them added to their apps.
Fixtures / Test Data
A good pattern for creating fixtures is to do the following inside your app:
meteor create --package fixtures
Then modify the package.js file to set the debugOnly
flag to true like this:
Package.describe({
name: 'fixtures',
version: '0.0.1',
debugOnly: true,
// ...
});
The debugOnly
flag instruct Meteor not to bundle this package when building, which is how you
ensure this package does not make it to production. You can now define all your fixtures in this
package.
Debug output
Please include a way to get more detailed info about your frameworks' test runs.
One way that we've done it is by having an environment flag that the user can set. Feel free to use VELOCITY_DEBUG
if you'd like.
For example, you could write your logging like this:
var DEBUG = process.env.VELOCITY_DEBUG;
DEBUG && console.log('[my-framework] helpful debugging info', someVar)
Writing a new Mirror Package
For velocity:core code contributors
Developing on velocity:core
Getting started
1. Clone the repository
git clone [email protected]:meteor-velocity/velocity.git velocity-core
cd velocity-core
2. Setup Git Flow
We ue Git Flow with the standard branch names. Look at the cheatsheet for an introduction and installation instructions.
When you have installed Git Flow, make sure that you have the local branches
develop
an master
and do this in the velocity-core folder:
git flow init -d
git config gitflow.prefix.versiontag v
3. Testing
We use:
- xolvio:cucumber for end-to-end tests
- sanjo:jasmine for integration and unit tests
You can run the tests with: ./ci.sh
Add or edit end to end tests in: test-app/tests/
.
The Jasmine unit and integration tests are located in tests/
and added via package.js Package.onTest
.
You can run only the unit and integration tests with ./run-jasmine.js
.
4. Code conventions
We use JSHint to ensure a common code style. It's also part of our CI.
npm install [email protected] -g
Please also follow:
- The Meteor Style Guide
- Style guide for cross-platform server-side development
5. Contribute and ask questions
Now you know the basics of how to contribute code to velocity:core. Make sure that you get in contact with the other core contributors before you do something bigger. We use Slack where you can communicate with the team. You can ask questions there.
Publishing a new version
Replace X.X.X in the following steps with the version that you release. Make sure that you follow the Semver conventions for increasing the version.
- Pull the latest changes from the branch
develop
- Start a release with:
git flow release start X.X.X
- Update History.md with summary ofchanges
- Bump version numbers in package.js and yuidoc.json
- Publish to Meteor with:
meteor publish
- Commit release changes with the commit message "Release of X.X.X".
- Finish the release with:
git flow release finish -p X.X.X
Meteor Method Naming Convention
We have two naming schemas:
- When the method does something with a resource type:
velocity/<RESOURCE_NAME>/<ACTION>
- When the method isn't specific to a resource type:
velocity/<ACTION>
All parts are camelCase and start with a lowercase letter.
##Contributors
We are collaborating with an all-star team on unifying the Meteor testing landscape:
- Sam Hatoum from Xolv.io, author of The Meteor Testing Manual
- Adrian Lanning from Share911, contributor to all things Meteor
- Mike Risse from MadEye, author of mocha-web
- Robert Dickert from Meteor Boulder, contributor to all things Meteor
- Jonas Aschenbrenner, velocity contributor, Jasmine package
- Richard Smith from RSBA Technology Ltd, author of Meteor-RobotFramework
For general questions about testing, check out Testing on the Meteor forums.
For specific questions about velocity core, please post in Velocity Core.