Testing in Node.js

A test driven development cycle simplifies the thought process of writing code, makes it easier, and quicker in the long run. But just writing tests is not enough by itself, knowing the kinds of tests to write and how to structure code to conform to this pattern is what it's all about. In this article we will take a look at building a small app in Node.js following a TDD pattern.

Besides simple 'unit' tests, which we are all familiar with; We can also have Node.js's Async code running, which adds an extra dimension in that we don't always know the order in which functions will run or we may be trying to test something in a callback or checking to see how an async function is working. In this article we will be building a Node app which can search for files that match a given query.

The first step is obviously to write some tests, but even before that, we need to choose a testing framework. You can use vanilla Node, as there is an assert library built-in, but it's not much in terms of a test runner, and is pretty much the bare essentials.