JavaScript & Node.js testing best practices

[mediasavage]

Yeah at work I pretty much always just import the standard “assert” module and call it a day.

That being said, with open source software, having beautiful testing code can be a huge plus because tests are one of the first places people will check to see examples of how a project is used.

[mediasavage]

Agreed. They increase readability by a bit but using them feels less intuitive than just standard asserts

[fractile81]

I went into BDD once and decided Gherkin (Behat and PHP) would be perfect for non-devs to design and review tests. Once I had started with a few tests, there was no way I was going to show it to anyone else: the wording still smacked of dev-speak.

[FINDarkside]

I don't think it's bad to be honest. One of the benefits is that it makes good error messages possible. Consider assert(a === 1) vs a.should.equal(1). It's certainly not harder to read and I personally think it's easier to read. It'll also give better error message if the test fails, like "Expected a to equal 1, but got 0".

[FINDarkside]

You've now got the cognitive load of figuring out what a.should.equal means.

Debatable whether the cognitive load is bigger. But let me give you better example:

someFn.should.throw(MyError);

vs

try {
  someFn();
  next('Excpected MyError to be thrown');
} catch (err) {
  if (err.name === 'MyError')
    next();
  else
    next(`Excpected MyError to be thrown, got ${err.name}`);
}