why is jasmine-node not picking up my helper script?

Question

why is jasmine-node not picking up my helper script?

This question is likely based in my lack of previous experience with node.js, but I was hoping jasmine-node would just let me run my jasmine specs from the command line.

TestHelper.js:

var helper_func = function() {
    console.log("IN HELPER FUNC");
};

my_test.spec.js:

describe ('Example Test', function() {
  it ('should use the helper function', function() {
    helper_func();
    expect(true).toBe(true);
  }); 
});

Those are the only two files in the directory. Then, when I do:

jasmine-node .

I get

ReferenceError: helper_func is not defined

I'm sure the answer to this is easy, but I didn't find any super-simple intros, or anything obvious on github. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

javascript
unit-testing
testing
node.js
jasmine

Answer 1

In node, everything is namespaced to it's js file. To make the function callable by other files, change TestHelper.js to look like this:

var helper_func = function() {
    console.log("IN HELPER FUNC");
};
// exports is the "magic" variable that other files can read
exports.helper_func = helper_func;

And then change your my_test.spec.js to look like this:

// include the helpers and get a reference to it's exports variable
var helpers = require('./TestHelpers');

describe ('Example Test', function() {
  it ('should use the helper function', function() {
    helpers.helper_func(); // note the change here too
    expect(true).toBe(true);
  }); 
});

and, lastly, I believe jasmine-node . will run every file in the directory sequentially - but you don't need to run the helpers. Instead you could move them to a different directory (and change the ./ in the require() to the correct path), or you could just run jasmine-node *.spec.js.