One of the high potentials for a Frictionless Development Environment (FDE) is Cloud9.

It is one of a growing number of web applications that uses JavaScript as the programming language for both front-end and back-end. The latter brought to you by Node.js.

So I thought it was time to start playing around with JavaScript and Node. Here is an account of my very first adventure into this Brave New World.

Preparations: Adding JavaScript Support to Eclipse

To keep the number of changes low, I wanted to keep my trusted old Eclipse. So the first step was to install Nodeclipse and jshint-eclipse.

To support documentation in the Markdown format that Node uses, I installed the Markdown Editor plugin for Eclipse.

This left me with nothing for unit tests. So I installed the JavaScript tools from Eclipse. That gave me some JS support, but nothing for creating unit tests.

Some googling told me there is such a thing as JsUnit, the JS port of my beloved JUnit. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to come with Eclipse support, even though this thread indicates it does (or did).

Maybe I’m just doing it wrong. I’d appreciate any hints in the comments.

Some more googling informed me that Orion is using JsTestDriver.

This introduction to JsTestDriver explains in detail how it works.

First Exercise: Roman Numerals

Now that I’m all set up, it’s time to do a little exercise to get my feet wet. For this I picked the Roman Numerals kata.

I started out by following this JsTestDriver example. I created a new JavaScript project in Eclipse, added src/main/js and src/test/js folders, and created the JsTestDriver configuration file:

server: http://localhost:9876

load:
  - src/main/js/*.js
  - src/test/js/*.js

Next, I opened the JsTestDriver window using Window|Show View|Other|JavaScript|JsTestDriver and started the JsTestDriver server. I then opened the client in FireFox at http://127.0.0.1:42442/capture.

The next step was to create a new run configuration: Run|Run Configurations|JsTestDriver Test. I selected the project and the JsTestDriver configuration within the project, and checked Run on Every Save.

Now everything is set up to start the TDD cycle. First a test:

RomanNumeralsTest = TestCase("RomanNumeralsTest");

RomanNumeralsTest.prototype.testArabicToRoman
    = function() {
  var romanNumerals = new TestApp.RomanNumerals();

  assertEquals("i", romanNumerals.arabicToRoman(1));
};

And then the implementation:

TestApp = { };

TestApp.RomanNumerals = function() { };

TestApp.RomanNumerals.prototype.arabicToRoman
    = function (arabic) {
  return null;
};

I completed the rest of the kata as usual.

Reflections

The cool thing about JsTestDriver is that it automatically runs all the tests every time you change something. This shortens the feedback cycle and keeps you in the flow. For Java, InfiniTest does the same.

The problem with my current tool chain is that support for renaming is extremely limited. I got Operation unavailable on the current selection. Select a JavaScript project, source folder, resource, or a JavaScript file, or a non-readonly type, var, function, parameter, local variable, or type variable.

Other refactorings do exist, like Extract Local Variable and Extract Method, but they mess up the formatting. They also give errors, but then work when trying again.

All in all I feel satisfied with the first steps I’ve taken on this journey. I’m a little worried about the stability of the tools. I also realize I have a more to learn about JavaScript prototypes.