TestCLI

This is a small test helper that is designed to be used with Mocha and provides the ability to test that a command-line tool (that generally creates files, generates output, etc) is behaving as expected. I've written a few node command-line applications and testing them has proven to be tedious, so this tool has been written to assist with the process.

Writing Tests

A test for TestCLI starts with a directory. In that directory is a command file which contains the command that will be passed to child_process.exec and run.

Once the command has completed, TestCLI will then proceed to check that expected results match the actual results. How does it do this? Well it looks for files / folders that start with the word expected-. For instance, the following is an example folder structure that is used in the Interleave tests:

- simple-build
|- command
|- src/
|- expected-dist/

Now, Interleave is a build tool that typically creates a dist folder with a number of files that have been "built". The expected-dist folder in the directory indicates to TestCLI that it should expect to find a dist folder after the command has completed. In fact TestCLI is pretty aggressive in this regard, and if you specify an expected-foo folder in your test directory, it will rimraf any existing foo directory out of there before running the command (so don't put anything important in there, and ideally exclude them from version control).

If a file in the expected-foo folder does not exist (deep nesting supported) in the generated foo folder output, then this will result in an error condition. Unexpected files in the foo folder will not constitute a failure but a warning will be reported.

For some samples, have a look in the test folder of this repo.

License(s)

MIT

Copyright (c) 2014 Damon Oehlman damon.oehlman@gmail.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.