When I started playing around with Ember.js almost a year ago, the testability story left something to be desired. You could unit test an object without any trouble, but a unit test is only one way to get feedback when you’re building a software product. In addition to unit tests, I wanted a way to verify the integration of multiple components. So like most people testing rich JavaScript applications, I reached for the mother of all testing tools, Selenium.
Now before I bash it, without a proper introduction, it’s worth mentioning that Selenium is a great way to verify your entire web application works with a full production-like database and all your production dependencies, etc. And from a QA perspective, this tool can be a great resource for teams who need end-to-end UI acceptance tests.
But over time, a seemingly small test suite built on Selenium can begin to drag the velocity of your team to a snails pace. One easy way to reduce this pain is to avoid building a large application in the first place. If you build a handful of smaller web applications instead, it might help keep you afloat for a little longer because no individual build will crush the team, as you grow.
But even on a small project, the real problem with Selenium is that it’s not part of the test driven development process. When I’m doing red/ green/ refactor I don’t have time for slow feedback in any form. I needed a way to write both unit and integration tests that would provide quick feedback to help me shape the software I was writing in a more iterative way. If you are using a version of Ember.js >= RC3, you’re in luck because writing a unit or integration test is a walk in the part.
Ember.js Testing
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