Building and Testing with Grunt

This article describes the setup of the "Durandal HTML Starter Kit Pro" contributed by Rainer Wittmann.

Quick start

1. Install node from https://nodejs.org
2. Install grunt using npm install -g grunt-cli
3. Download/clone the repo found at https://github.com/RainerAtSpirit/HTMLStarterKitPro
4. Run npm install in the repo's root directory to install grunt's dependencies
5. Run grunt, which will run the default task, which runs jshint, jasmine:modules and opens the resultant _specrunner.html in the browser

Writing tests

There are two grunt watch tasks configured.

1. grunt watch:modules. Whenever a spec in the test/specs/modules directory is updated grunt:watch will run grunt:jasmine:modules.
2. grunt watch:app. Durandal app testing, due to its the async nature, isn't that straight forward in jasmine. You can find an example using jasmine's native runs and waitsFor in test/specs/app. Check the Durandal's documentation for updated info about that topic.

Building the app

Experimental: There's a grunt build task that builds an optimized version in the build directory.

Customization

Modify/adjust package.json after cloning. Open gruntfile.js to add/modify the existing configuration.

    ...
    grunt.registerTask('build', ['jshint', 'jasmine', 'clean', 'copy', 'durandal:main', 'uglify', 'connect:build']);
    grunt.registerTask('default', 'start web server for jasmine tests in browser', function() {
        grunt.task.run('jshint');
        grunt.task.run('jasmine:modules');

        grunt.event.once('connect.test.listening', function( host, port ) {
           var specRunnerUrl = 'https://' + host + ':' + port + '/_SpecRunner.html';
           grunt.log.writeln('Jasmine specs available at: ' + specRunnerUrl);
           require('open')(specRunnerUrl);
        });

        grunt.task.run('connect:test:keepalive');
    });

New to grunt?

Head over to https://gruntjs.com/ to learn the basics.