Chapter 3. Installing Zombie.js and Mocha

By the end of this chapter you should be able to setup the base structure of a test environment for an application using Zombie.js and Mocha.

Topics covered in this chapter are:

• Setting up the Zombie.js and Mocha packages in your application manifest
• Setting up a test environment
• Running your first test

Changing the application manifest

You'll now be extending the to-do application you started building in the previous chapter and start providing it with the ability to test itself.

In the root of the application, you have a file named package.json that you already changed to introduce some modules that your application depends on. Now you need to add a new section that specifies the dependencies on other modules during the development and testing phase. This section is named devDependencies and is only installed by NPM if the NODE_ENV environment variable is not set to production. This is a good place to introduce the dependencies on modules that need to be there for running your tests.

First you need to add the mocha and zombie modules:

{
  "description": "To-do App",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "private": true, 
  "dependencies": {
    "union": "0.3.0",
    "flatiron": "0.2.8",
    "plates": "0.4.x",
    "node-static": "0.6.0",
    "nano": "3.3.0",
    "flatware-cookie-parser": "0.1.x",
    "flatware-session": "0.1.x"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "mocha": "1.4.x",
    "zombie": "1.4.x"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "test": "vows --spec",
    "start": "node app.js"
  },
  "name": "todo",
  "author": "Pedro",
  "homepage": ""
}

Then you will need to install these missing dependencies using NPM:

$ npm install
...
mocha@1.4.2 node_modules/mocha
...

zombie@1.4.1 node_modules/zombie
...

This will install these two modules and their internal dependencies inside the node_modules folder, making them available for your application at any time.