You will need CoffeeScript: http://coffeescript.org

..is probably why you're here. It's very reminiscent of rspec. Here's a quick illustrative example:

describe 'my lovely feature', ->
	it 'should rock your socks', ->
		socks = get_socks("yours")
		ok socks.are_rocked

describe blocks can be nested, and are not required. The assert node library is automatically imported into the global scope for you.

Since node is pervasively (and, in some cases, painfully) asynchronous, you'll need a hand testing out all that asynchronous code. It's reasonably painless though, I promise.

If you want to have an asynchronous test, the body of your test should take a single argument, pass. Inside every asynchronous callback, you must call pass() with an optional description of what was checked (this is useful for debugging).

So that coffee-spec knows when your test is complete, you must also tell it how many calls to pass it should expect your test to make. This is done by passing the number of expected calls to the expect function somewhere in the function body of your test (typically the first or last line).

For example:

it 'should iterate through a list asynchronously', (pass) ->
	[1, 2].asyncMap(((elem) -> elem + 1), (results) ->
		ok results[0] is 1
		ok results[2] is 2
		pass()

	[1].asyncMap(((elem) -> elem), (results) ->
		ok results.length is 1
		pass('length check')

	expect 2

If either of the callbacks goes astray and never gets called, coffee-spec will wait for a full second and then fail your test. If you provide unique descriptions to each pass call, it'll print out the ones that it did receive, which will help you figure out which ones went astray.

To install a symlink to the library in ~/.node_libraries:

make link

or if you want to copy the javascript file instead of linking it:

make copy

If you change the source (in src/), you should run:

make

to regenerate any necessary javascript (under lib).

spec: require 'coffee-spec'
spec.run test_dir, opts, cb

Where cb is optional, and opts is a dictionary containing any of the following:

• compile: compile tests to intermediate files. If true, temp_dir bust also be given.
• temp_dir: directory to place temporary (compiled) tests. This will be created if it does not already exist, but will not be deleted afterwards
• verbose: if true, test names will be output as they are run

If cb is given, it will be called after all tests have been run, with the number of passed and failed tests. e.g:

spec.run test_dir, opts, (passed, failed) ->
	if failed > 0
		throw new Error("failed " + failed + "tests")

coffee-spec requires access to the coffee-script source libraries (coffee-script.js and friends). If you use the zero install feed at http://gfxmonk.net/dist/0install/coffee-script.xml, coffee-script will be placed on $NODE_PATH appropriately

• setup/teardown for describe blocks
• make it fall-back to using only the coffee binary if libs are not available