Test Driven Ajax (on Rails)

Lexing JavaScript with assert_js

To test JavaScript without writing an entire web browser in Ruby, install Ruby's venerated ancestor Perl, and then install this package:

http://corion.net/perl-dev/Javascript-PurePerl-0.08.tar.gz

It contains a lexer that converts JavaScript into XML describing each lexeme. Write this little snip of Perl into a file called jsToXml.pl:

  use strict;
  use Javascript::PurePerl;

  open(JS, 'tmp/sample.js');
  read(JS, my $source, -s JS);
  close(JS);
  my $tree = Javascript::PurePerl->new()->parse( code => $source );

  print $tree->toString,"\n";

It reads a temporary file called sample.js, converts its contents to XML, and emits that to its stdout. We can wrap that Perl up in this Ruby assertion:

  def assert_js(source)
    File.open('tmp/sample.js', 'w'){|f|  f.write(source)  }
    assert_xml `perl jsToXml.pl`

    assert_xpath '/AST/Program/SourceElements' do |node|
      yield(node) if block_given?
    end
  end

The program jsToXml.pl returns a big XML tree, packed with every obscene detail of your JavaScript. Where your JavaScript had a simple term like "Ajax.Updater", Javascript::PurePerl explains it all, like this:

  <MemberMemberExpression name='ClassExpression'>
    <Identifier name='lhs'>Ajax</Identifier>
    <Identifier name='member'>Updater</Identifier>
  </MemberMemberExpression>

Nobody should write assertions for all of that! We only need to query into that huge database, and fetch out a few specific details. And that's where assert_xpath shines:

 def test_assert_js yaml_to_xhtml(get_omap) hammy_id ...