Look, there's no easy way to do this. I'm working on a project that is inherently multithreaded. Events come in from the operating system and I have to process them concurrently.
The simplest way to deal with testing complex, multithreaded application code is this: If it's too complex to test, you're doing it wrong. If you have a single instance that has multiple threads acting upon it, and you can't test situations where these threads step all over each other, then your design needs to be redone. It's both as simple and as complex as this.
There are many ways to program for multithreading that avoids threads running through instances at the same time. The simplest is to make all your objects immutable. Of course, that's not usually possible. So you have to identify those places in your design where threads interact with the same instance and reduce the number of those places. By doing this, you isolate a few classes where multithreading actually occurs, reducing the overall complexity of testing your system.
But you have to realize that even by doing this, you still can't test every situation where two threads step on each other. To do that, you'd have to run two threads concurrently in the same test, then control exactly what lines they are executing at any given moment. The best you can do is simulate this situation. But this might require you to code specifically for testing, and that's at best a half step towards a true solution.
Probably the best way to test code for threading issues is through static analysis of the code. If your threaded code doesn't follow a finite set of thread safe patterns, then you might have a problem. I believe Code Analysis in VS does contain some knowledge of threading, but probably not much.
Look, as things stand currently (and probably will stand for a good time to come), the best way to test multithreaded apps is to reduce the complexity of threaded code as much as possible. Minimize areas where threads interact, test as best as possible, and use code analysis to identify danger areas.
Karma is a JavaScript test-runner built with Node.js and meant for unit testing.
The Protractor is for end-to-end testing and uses Selenium Web Driver to drive tests.
Both have been made by the Angular team. You can use any assertion-library you want with either.
Screencast: Karma Getting started
related:
pros:
- Uses node.js, so compatible with Win/OS X/Linux
- Run tests from a browser or headless with PhantomJS
- Run on multiple clients at once
- Option to launch, capture, and automatically shut down browsers
- Option to run server/clients on development computer or separately
- Run tests from a command line (can be integrated into ant/maven)
- Write tests xUnit or BDD style
- Supports multiple JavaScript test frameworks
- Auto-run tests on save
- Proxies requests cross-domain
- Possible to customize:
- Extend it to wrap other test-frameworks (Jasmine, Mocha, QUnit built-in)
- Your own assertions/refutes
- Reporters
- Browser Launchers
- Plugin for WebStorm
- Supported by Netbeans IDE
Cons:
I'm totally unqualified to comment on mocha.js's features, strengths, and weaknesses,
but it was just recommended to me by someone I trust in the JS community.
List of features, as reported by its website:
- browser support
- simple async support, including promises
- test coverage reporting
- string diff support
- javascript # API for running tests
- proper exit status for CI support etc
- auto-detects and disables coloring for non-ttys
- maps uncaught exceptions to the correct test case
- async test timeout support
- test-specific timeouts
- growl notification support
- reports test durations
- highlights slow tests
- file watcher support
- global variable leak detection
- optionally run tests that match a regexp
- auto-exit to prevent "hanging" with an active loop
- easily meta-generate suites & test-cases
- mocha.opts file support
- clickable suite titles to filter test execution
- node debugger support
- detects multiple calls to done()
- use any assertion library you want
- extensible reporting, bundled with 9+ reporters
- extensible test DSLs or "interfaces"
- before, after, before each, after each hook
- arbitrary transpiler support (coffee-script etc)
- TextMate bundle
This no longer exists, redirects to sequential.js instead
Yolpo is a tool to visualize the execution of javascript. Javascript API developers are encouraged to write their use cases to show and tell their API. Such use cases forms the basis of regression tests.
Futuristic test runner with built-in support for ES2015. Even though JavaScript is single-threaded, IO in Node.js can happen in parallel due to its async nature. AVA takes advantage of this and runs your tests concurrently, which is especially beneficial for IO heavy tests. In addition, test files are run in parallel as separate processes, giving you even better performance and an isolated environment for each test file.
- Minimal and fast
- Simple test syntax
- Runs tests concurrently
- Enforces writing atomic tests
- No implicit globals
- Isolated environment for each test file
- Write your tests in ES2015
- Promise support
- Generator function support
- Async function support
- Observable support
- Enhanced asserts
- Optional TAP o
utput
- Clean stack traces
A JavaScript test-runner built with Node.js. Very modular and flexible. It comes with its own assertion library, but you can add your own if you like. The assertions library is decoupled, so you can also use it with other test-runners. Instead of using assert(!...) or expect(...).not..., it uses refute(...) which is a nice twist imho.
A browser JavaScript testing toolkit. It does browser testing with browser automation (think JsTestDriver), QUnit style static HTML page testing, testing in headless browsers (PhantomJS, jsdom, ...), and more. Take a look at the overview!
A Node.js testing toolkit. You get the same test case library, assertion library, etc. This is also great for hybrid browser and Node.js code. Write your test case with Buster.JS and run it both in Node.js and in a real browser.
Screencast: Buster.js Getting started (2:45)
pros:
- Uses node.js, so compatible with Win/OS X/Linux
- Run tests from a browser or headless with PhantomJS (soon)
- Run on multiple clients at once
- Supports NodeJS testing
- Don't need to run server/clients on development computer (no need for IE)
- Run tests from a command line (can be integrated into ant/maven)
- Write tests xUnit or BDD style
- Supports multiple JavaScript test frameworks
- Defer tests instead of commenting them out
- SinonJS built-in
- Auto-run tests on save
- Proxies requests cross-domain
- Possible to customize:
- Extend it to wrap other test-frameworks (JsTestDriver built in)
- Your own assertions/refutes
- Reporters (xUnit XML, traditional dots, specification, tap, TeamCity and more built-in)
- Customize/replace the HTML that is used to run the browser-tests
- TextMate and Emacs integration
Cons:
- Stil in beta so can be buggy
- No plugin for Eclipse/IntelliJ (yet)
- Doesn't group results by os/browser/version like TestSwarm *. It does, however, print out the browser name and version in the test results.
- No history of previous test results like TestSwarm *
- Doesn't fully work on windows as of May 2014
* TestSwarm is also a Continuous Integration server, while you need a separate CI server for Buster.js. It does, however, output xUnit XML reports, so it should be easy to integrate with Hudson, Bamboo or other CI servers.
https://github.com/jquery/testswarm
TestSwarm is officially no longer under active development as stated on their GitHub webpage. They recommend Karma, browserstack-runner, or Intern.
This is a behavior-driven framework (as stated in quote below) that might interest developers familiar with Ruby or Ruby on Rails. The syntax is based on RSpec that are used for testing in Rails projects.
Jasmine specs can be run from an html page (in qUnit fashion) or from a test runner (as Karma).
Jasmine is a behavior-driven development framework for testing your JavaScript code. It does not depend on any other JavaScript frameworks. It does not require a DOM.
If you have experience with this testing framework, please contribute with more info :)
Project home: http://jasmine.github.io/
QUnit focuses on testing JavaScript in the browser while providing as much convenience to the developer as possible. Blurb from the site:
QUnit is a powerful, easy-to-use JavaScript unit test suite. It's used by the jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Mobile projects and is capable of testing any generic JavaScript code
QUnit shares some history with TestSwarm (above):
QUnit was originally developed by John Resig as part of jQuery. In 2008 it got its own home, name and API documentation, allowing others to use it for their unit testing as well. At the time it still depended on jQuery. A rewrite in 2009 fixed that, now QUnit runs completely standalone.
QUnit's assertion methods follow the CommonJS Unit Testing specification, which was to some degree influenced by QUnit.
Project home: http://qunitjs.com/
Another great tool is sinon.js by Christian Johansen, the author of Test-Driven JavaScript Development. Best described by himself:
Standalone test spies, stubs and mocks
for JavaScript. No dependencies works
with any unit testing framework.
The Intern Web site provides a direct feature comparison to the other testing frameworks on this list. It offers more features out of the box than any other JavaScript-based testing system.
A new but yet very powerful testing framework. It allows snapshot based testing as well this increases the testing speed and creates a new dynamic in terms of testing
Check out one of their talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAKYQpTC7MA
Better yet: Getting Started
Best Answer
Great question. It's a challenge to pick what parts of a project to test - a single class or collection of classes, or both.
Although testing around the user interface testing can catch many logic and event errors, the UI is commonly where plenty of strange things can happen. Many errors in a Flash project can be due to unexpected user interaction modes - basically a beta tester does something in the UI you never would have thought of doing.
If your project is driven by user interaction, especially game oriented as opposed to RIA-oriented, planning a good set sequence of tests is as important as the tests themselves. For example, you may try action A, then action B, knowing that B depends on A because that's how you wrote it. A tester may try B before A, a scenario you may not have expected and one that would not be caught if A and B were tested independently as units. It may also mean you would want to write 3 or 4 tests: A, B, A->B, and B->A, so the number of states can get out of hand.
Something to consider is a testing framework like Flexunit to automate many of the tasks.
Edit: I should note that FlexUnit works for pure AS3 as well.