Test Spec Parser

A parser and runtime for markdown-inspired documentation and testing files

Install

npm install @clubedaentrega/test-spec --save

Usage

var spec = require('@clubedaentrega/test-spec')

// Usually, the source is read from some *.md file
var source = '# Title\n'+
	'## Sub section\n'+
	'Some textual content\n'+
	'\tuser:\n'+
	'\t\tname: "Gui".toUpperCase()'

// Compile the source to a tree of section, text and value blocks
var mainSection = spec.compile(source),
	subSection = mainSection.children[0],
	valueBlock = subSection.children[1],
	// Execute the value block
	value = valueBlock.run()

console.log(value) // {user: {name: 'GUI'}}

Concepts

Testing is, at the same time:

• very great because it lets you trust code is ready for production!
• extremely boring to write, because test code is dumb and repetitive

This module tries to solve this by making testing code more concise and unifying testing and documentation.

Markdown was choosen because it's easy to write/read and it's not code!

This module is the fundamental parser and compiler for api-test, but can be used separately.

Syntax and parsing

This module implements a tiny subset of markdown: headers, paragraphs and code blocks. It does not aim at understanding any other feature (like lists, images, links, etc), but those constructions are accepted. That is, they are not considered valid syntax, but are simply treated as text.

The source is first transformed into a tree of sections (headers). Each section may have sub-sections, text paragraphs and value blocks.

Compiling

Parsed values are compiled to native JS functions, exposing a run() method, like in example above.

Value syntax

The syntax for value expressions was designed to be concise and expressive. The values will be eval'ed as normal JS with a context with special variables (see default context bellow).

The object can be a simple JS value, like:

new Date

Or an object with one property by line and tabs used to declare sub-objects:

user:
	name:
		first: 'Happy'
		last: 'Customer'
	age: 37 + 2
	country: 'cm'.toUpperCase()

Or mixins, like:

user with name.first: 'Unhappy'

Learn more about the syntax in the file value-syntax.md

Default context

The following functions are defined in spec.baseContext and can be used to provide a common set of utility functions to tests.

• randomStr([len=8], [alphabet=a-zA-Z0-9+/])
• randomHex([len=8])
• randomCode([len=8])
• randomEmail([domain='example.com'])
• randomUrl([base='http://example.com'])
• random([min=0],[max=1])
• randomInt([min=0],[max=100])
• randomBool()
• randomDate([interval=1day], [base=now]): return a random date in the past
• randomOf(...values): return one of its arguments
• empty: the empty object {}

Docs

See complete docs