karma-browserify

Browserify for Karma

Browserify is an awesome tool for managing front-end module dependencies with require, just like you would in Node. Karma is a killer JS test runner that's super fast and easy. But put them together and you're entering a world of pain. This plugin aims to make them play nice.

Under most circumstances, Browserify attempts to give you a single monolithic bundle of all of your JS files and their dependencies. That's perfect for fast delivery with minimal requests in a browser environment, but sucks hard if you're just trying to run your tests (over and over). This plugin hijacks the Browserify pipeline to produce a single bundle of all dependencies found in your tests (and their dependencies) which is transferred to the browser under test only once (unless it changes). A separate, minimal bundle is generated for each test which, aside from the test code, only contains references to external dependencies in the main bundle. That way dependencies are updated in the browser only when necessary (watching for changes is supported) and your tests remain lightning fast.

Installation

Install the plugin from npm:

$ npm install karma-browserify --save-dev

Or from Github:

$ npm install 'git+https://github.com/xdissent/karma-browserify.git' --save-dev

Add browserify to the frameworks and preprocessor keys in your Karma configuration:

module.exports = (config) ->
  config.set

    # frameworks to use
    frameworks: ['mocha', 'browserify']

    preprocessors:
      '**/*.coffee': ['coffee']
      'my/test/files/*': ['browserify']

    # ...

Options

The plugin may be configured using the browserify key in your Karma config:

module.exports = (config) ->
  config.set

    browserify: 
      extension: ['.coffee']  # This is for future compatibility.
      ignore: [path.join __dirname, 'components/angular-unstable/angular.js']
      transform: ['coffeeify']
      watch: true   # Watches dependencies only (Karma watches the tests)

    # ...

Usage

Just require modules from within tests as you normally would in Node:

something = require '../some/module'

describe 'karma tests with browserify', ->

  it 'should gimme dat module', ->
    something.should.exist()

See the example for a simple working setup.