Test-Driven JavaScript with ScrewUnit and BlueRidge March 2, 2010

Test-Driven JavaScript with ScrewUnit and BlueRidge

Web applications increasingly rely on JavaScript to implement their business logic, but until recently creating this code was challenging and risky. Recent evolutions in JavaScript testing frameworks now allow creating test suites, test-driving development, and running tests on a continuous integration server. This allows us to support more complex JavaScript, have confidence in the implementation, and push more of the logic from the server into the browser, reducing the load on the server.

We now have a reliable JavaScript testing process in place, using BlueRidge, ScrewUnit and Rhino. We'll walk through how we:

* test-drive Javascript development
* safely refactor JavaScript files when they get too big
* run tests on a continuous build server
* create more modular JavaScript

We've come up with guidelines that help us write more solid and ambitious JavaScript. We'd like to share what we've learned, and how it has impacted how we work and approach the design and implementation now.

This talk is targeting at developers familiar with unit testing and JavaScript, but not necessarily both together. No Ruby is necessary. (One of our developers blasted out a Java/Maven version as well).

Speakers' Bios

Andrew Peterson has 20 years experience building and managing software systems for consumers, enterprises and non-profits. He brings expertise in the full life-cycle of software development, software methodologies, software architecture, software engineering, and usability. In the consumer space, he led the team in the creation of the top-selling SoundEdit 16. He served numerous roles for the leading enterprise supplier of software for container terminals, shipping ports and lines, and distribution centers. At Carbon Five he has focused on start-ups, including Aardvark and goBalto.com.

Jonah Williams is a developer at Carbon Five, a boutique software consulting firm. He builds web applications in Java and Ruby and is pursuing agile iPhone application development. He is a advocate of test driven development and interested in identifying sustainable and efficient development practices. Jonah's previous experience includes enterprise Java applications, PC games, and hardware engineering. His work and opinions can be found at http://blog.carbonfive.com.

Official Website: http://www.sdforum.org/javasig