Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Testing and Prototyping JavaScript Applications


I'm pleased to announce that I've finished my first course for Pluralsight entitled Front-End First: Testing and Prototyping JavaScript Apps.

Years ago it was common for the back-end to have code coverage, but having unit tests for client-side JavaScript was difficult, cumbersome, and rare. Thankfully, today that is no longer the case. By using various tools and libraries such as Mocha, Sinon.js, and GruntJS you can easily provide code coverage for your front-end as well.

Historically a front-end developer had to wait until the back-end was complete before they could start truly building a functional User Interface. Thankfully today there are libraries such as Mockjax, AmplifyJS, and mockJSON that can enable you to simulate the interactions with the back-end before its even complete. By doing so, this enables a front-end developer to work independently from the back-end and allows both teams to efficiently work within their speciality.