lab

Node test utility

Lead Maintainer: Wyatt Preul

Introduction

lab is a simple test utility for node. Unlike other test utilities, lab uses domains instead of uncaught exception and other global manipulation. Our goal with lab is to keep the execution engine as simple as possible, and not try to build an extensible framework. lab works with any assertion library that throws an error when a condition isn't met.

Command Line

lab supports the following command line options:

• -a, --assert - name of assert library to use.
• -c, --coverage - enables code coverage analysis.
• --coverage-path - sets code coverage path.
• --coverage-exclude - sets code coverage excludes.
• -C, --colors - enables or disables color output. Defaults to console capabilities.
• -d, --dry - dry run. Skips all tests. Use with -v to generate a test catalog. Defaults to false.
• -D, --debug - print the stack during a domain error event.
• -e, --environment - value to set the NODE_ENV environment variable to, defaults to 'test'.
• -f, --flat - do not perform a recursive load of test files within the test directory.
• -g, --grep - only run tests matching the given pattern which is internally compiled to a RegExp.
• -h, --help - show command line usage.
• -i, --id - only run the test for the given identifier (or identifiers range).
• -I, --ignore - ignore a list of globals for the leak detection (comma separated)
• -l, --leaks - disables global variable leak detection.
• -L, --lint - run linting rules using linter. Disabled by default.
• --lint-errors-threshold - maximum absolute amount of linting errors. Defaults to 0.
• --lint-warnings-threshold - maximum absolute amount of linting warnings. Defaults to 0.
• -m, --timeout - individual tests timeout in milliseconds (zero disables timeout). Defaults to 2 seconds.
• -M, --context-timeout - default timeouts for before, after, beforeEach and afterEach in milliseconds. Disabled by default.
• -n, --linter - specify linting program; default is eslint.
• --lint-options - specify options to pass to linting program. It must be a string that is JSON.parse(able).
• -o, --output - file to write the report to, otherwise sent to stdout.
• -p, --parallel - sets parallel execution as default test option. Defaults to serial execution.
• -P, --pattern - only load files with the given pattern in the name.
• -r, --reporter - the reporter used to generate the test results. Defaults to console. Options are:
  • console - text report.
  • html - HTML test and code coverage report (sets -c).
  • json - output results in JSON format.
  • junit - output results in JUnit XML format.
  • tap - TAP protocol report.
  • lcov - output to lcov format.
  • clover - output results in Clover XML format.
  • Multiple Reporters - See Below
  • Custom Reporters - See Below
• -s, --silence - silence test output, defaults to false.
• -S, --sourcemaps - enables sourcemap support for stack traces and code coverage, disabled by default.
• -t, --threshold - minimum code test coverage percentage (sets -c), defaults to 100%.
• -T, --transform - javascript file that exports an array of objects ie. [ { ext: ".js", transform: function (content, filename) { ... } } ]. Note that if you use this option with -c (--coverage), then you must generate sourcemaps and pass sourcemaps option to get proper line numbers.
• -v, --verbose - verbose test output, defaults to false.

Usage

To install lab globally:

$ npm install -g lab

To use locally:

$ npm install --save-dev lab

By default, lab loads all the '*.js' files inside the local 'test' directory and executes the tests found. To use different directories or files, pass the file or directories as arguments:

$ lab unit.js

Test files must require the lab module, and export a test script:

var Code = require('code');   // assertion library
var Lab = require('lab');
var lab = exports.lab = Lab.script();

lab.test('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', function (done) {

    Code.expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
    done();
});

When a test is completed, done(err) must be called, otherwise the test will time out (2 seconds by default) and will fail. The test passes if done() is called once before the timeout, no exception thrown, and no arguments are passed to done(). If no callback function is provided, the test is considered a TODO reminder and will be skipped.

Tests can be organized into experiments:

lab.experiment('math', function () {

    lab.test('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', function (done) {

        Code.expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
        done();
    });
});

If you need to perform some async actions before or after executing the tests inside an experiment, the before() and after() methods can be used. To execute code before or after each test in an experiment, use beforeEach() and afterEach().

lab.experiment('math', function () {

    lab.before(function (done) {

        // Wait 1 second
        setTimeout(function () { done(); }, 1000);
    });

    lab.beforeEach(function (done) {

        // Run before every single test
        done();
    });

    lab.test('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', function (done) {

        Code.expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
        done();
    });
});

Both test() and experiment() accept an optional options argument which must be an object with the following optional keys:

• timeout - set a test or experiment specific timeout in milliseconds. Defaults to the global timeout (2000ms or the value of -m).
• parallel - sets parallel execution of tests within each experiment level. Defaults to false (serial execution).
• skip - skip execution. Cannot be overridden in children once parent is set to skip.
• only - marks all other tests or experiments with skip. This doesn't mark all other experiments and tests in a suite of scripts as skipped, instead it works within a single test script.

before(), after(), beforeEach(), afterEach() accept an optional options argument which must be an object with the following optional keys:

• timeout - set a specific timeout in milliseconds. Disabled by default or the value of -M.

lab.experiment('math', { timeout: 1000 }, function () {

    lab.before({ timeout: 500 }, function (done) {

        doSomething();
        done();
    });

    lab.test('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', { parallel: true }, function (done) {

        Code.expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
        done();
    });
});

The script([options]) method takes an optional options argument where options is an object with the following optional keys:

• schedule - if false, an automatic execution of the script is disabled. Automatic execution allows running lab test scripts directly with node without having to use the cli (e.g. node test/script.js). When using lab programmatically, this behavior is undesired and can be turned off by setting schedule to false. Defaults to true.
• cli - allows setting command line options within the script. Note that the last script file loaded wins and usage of this is recommended only for temporarily changing the execution of tests. This option is useful when code working with an automatic test engine that runs test on commits. Setting this option has no effect when not using the CLI runner. For example setting cli to { ids: [1] } will only execute the first test loaded.

To make lab look like BDD:

var Code = require('code');
var Lab = require('lab');
var lab = exports.lab = Lab.script();

var describe = lab.describe;
var it = lab.it;
var before = lab.before;
var after = lab.after;
var expect = Code.expect;

describe('math', function () {

    it('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', function (done) {

        expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
        done();
    });
});

To make lab look like TDD:

var Code = require('code');
var Lab = require('lab');
var lab = exports.lab = Lab.script();

var suite = lab.suite;
var test = lab.test;
var before = lab.before;
var after = lab.after;
var expect = Code.expect;

suite('math', function () {

    test('returns true when 1 + 1 equals 2', function (done) {

        expect(1+1).to.equal(2);
        done();
    });
});

To use source transforms, you must specify a file that tells Lab how to do the transformation. You can specify many extensions with different transform functions such as .coffee or .jsx. A sample file using the babel transpiler could look like:

var Babel = require('babel-core');

module.exports = [
    {ext: '.js', transform: function (content, filename) {

        // Make sure to only transform your code or the dependencies you want
        if (filename.indexOf('node_modules') === -1) {
          var result = Babel.transform(content, { sourceMap: 'inline', filename: filename, sourceFileName: filename });
          return result.code;
        }

        return content;
    }}
];

Sometimes you want to disable code coverage for specific lines, and have the coverage report omit them entirely. To do so, use the $lab:coverage:(off|on)$ comments. For example:

// There is no way to cover this in node 0.10
/* $lab:coverage:off$ */
if (typeof value === 'symbol') {
    return '[' + value.toString() + ']';
}
/* $lab:coverage:on$ */

Extending the linter

lab uses a shareable eslint config, and a plugin containing several hapi specific linting rules. If you want to extend the default linter you must:

1. Add eslint-plugin-hapi and eslint-config-hapi as dependencies in your package.json. You must add both the plugin and the config because eslint treats them as peer dependencies. For more background, see eslint/eslint#3458 and eslint/eslint#2518.

2. In your project's eslint configuration, add "extends": "eslint-config-hapi". eslint will automatically infer the eslint-config-, so technically you can just write "extends": "hapi".

Your project's eslint configuration will now extend the default lab configuration.

Ignoring files in linting

Since eslint is used to lint, you can create an .eslintignore containing paths to be ignored:

node_modules/*
**/vendor/*.js

Best practices

• Install lab as a global module:

$ npm install -g lab

• Add lab as a dev dependency to your project's package.json along with a test script:

{
  "name": "example",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "dependencies": {
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "lab": "5.x.x"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "test": "lab -t 100",
    "test-cov-html": "lab -r html -o coverage.html"
  },
  "licenses": [
    {
      "type": "BSD",
      "url": "http://github.com/hapijs/lab/raw/master/LICENSE"
    }
  ]
}

Note that npm test will execute lab with the -t 100 option which will require 100% code coverage. Run npm run test-cov-html and check the coverage.html file to figure out where coverage is lacking. When coverage is below the threshold, the CLI with exit with code 1 and will result in an npm Error message.

• Run your tests with

$ npm test

Multiple Reporters

Multiple reporters can be specified by providing multiple reporter options.

$ lab -r console -r html

If any output -o is provided, they must match the same number of provided reporter options. The reporters would be paired with an output based on the order in which they were supplied. When specifying multiple outputs, use stdout to send a particular reporter to stdout.

$ lab -r console -o stdout -r html -o coverage.html -r lcov -o lcov.info -r json -o data.json

Multiple reporters of the same kind are also supported.

$ lab -r console -o stdout -r console -o console.log

Custom Reporters

If the value passed for reporter isn't included with Lab, it is loaded from the filesystem. If the string starts with a period ('./custom-reporter'), it will be loaded relative to the current working directory. If it doesn't start with a period ('custom-reporter'), it will be loaded from the node_modules directory, just like any module installed using npm install.

Reporters must be a class with the following methods: start, test and end. options are passed to the class constructor upon initialization.

See the json reporter for a good starting point.

Acknowledgements

lab initial code borrowed heavily from mocha, including the actual code used to render the coverage report into HTML. lab coverage code was originally adapted from blanket which in turn uses falafel.