jasonmorganson/litmus

Literate Testing

litmus

Literate Testing

Shorthand plaintext DSL for writing tests in natural language and an easy to read format so you can focus on the tests themselves. It does this by letting you write your tests without brackets or quotation.

Lets you to write:

Describe a feature
    It should exist
        Object.should.exist();
    It should not be null
        Object.should.not.be.null();
    It will do this someday

Instead of:

describe("a feature", function() {
    it("should exist", function() {
        Object.should.exist();
    });
    it("should not be null", function() {
        Object.should.not.be.null();
    });
    it("will do this someday");
});

Instalation

sudo npm install -g litmus

Usage

Write your litmus files anywhere and save them with the extension .litmus. In the directory where your files are run:

litmus

Any litmus files in that directory will be converted to Javascript files that you can then use in mocha like you normally would.

Format

The file format is just plain text. The extension is .litmus by default.

Syntax

The current syntax mirrors the 'mocha.js' BDD interface. It can be changed or extended by providing a syntax file in JSON format. See syntax/mocha.json.

Whitespace

Whitespace is used to distiguish code blocks and so therefore is signifcant. Any lines at the same level on indentation are considered to be in the same block.

Keywords

Any line starting with a keyword is treated as a mocha keyword function. If the line is followed by another at the same indent instead of an indented one it is set to a pending test.

Describe and It are currently the only two supported words and are used exactly how you would in mocha. Capitalization is ignored, so you can write them however you want to.

Caveats

• All tests are written in the syncronous format

---

TODO

• Support for async
• Commandline support
• Automatically run test suite
• More parsers
• Syntax highlighters