Question

Is there a place where my tests can live without being run by Meteor?

I just started my first Meteor project, and began by writing unit tests with Mocha and should.js. Though mocha runs without a problem, the tests prevent Meteor from starting up since it has issues using node’s require instead of __meteor_bootstrap__.require (full error message).

That being said, Meteor should not be running my tests! According to the Meteor documentation, code can only be placed on the client, server, or both. Unit test suites do no belong in these categories, and I am not the only person confused by Meteor’s lack of a well-defined location for placing automated tests.

Right now, my tests are kept in server/test/, with the contents of each file wrapped in the block:

if (typeof(Meteor) === 'undefined') { ... }

While this works, it does not feel elegant. Do you have any other suggestions for structuring your tests with your Meteor app?

Update: in lieu of explicit instructions in the Meteor docs, I followed the Rails folder conventions (4th paragraph), using a folder called test for storing my testing assets. I later moved this to server/test since I did not want it loaded on the client.

Answer 1

Place your tests in the tests/ folder. Unlike Rails, which uses a folder named test for this purpose, Meteor uses the plural tests for this folder name.

Assets stored in a folder named “tests” will be completely ignored by Meteor; these assets will not be loaded on the client or server.

Ironically, I was tipped off by someone having the opposite issue who wants their tests loaded by the Meteor client.