How to debug Jasmine-es6 in visual studio code 27/06/2018
CodingJavascriptTutorialUncategorized
2 Comments
This article is going to show the configuration required to debug Jasmine-ES6 in Visual studio code.
Jasmine-ES6 is a Helpers and overrides that augment Jasmine for use in an ES6+ environment. It is great when you have a project that you do not want to transpile using babel. And it turned out to be one of the NPM package that was used in one of the latest project in which I was involved.
Due to the nature of the plugin, it is not possible to Debug Jasmine-es6 directly in the browser, but it is possible by using the debug feature provided by Visual Studio Code. The settings that are going to be provided below, will actually work to emulate any NPM command that you are currently using.

Create a debug configuration file in Visual Studio Code.

Visual studio code enables use ( sometimes with the use of extension) to debug almost any coding language (js, c#, php,ect..).

To access the Debug page we need to click the “bug” icon on the left hand menu.

Now that we have accessed the debugging page, we are able to add our configuration. To do so, click on the dropdown next to the Green arrow, like shown in the image below.

Visual Studio Code (VSC) will provide you a list of “predefined” debugging configuration that will support you in completing the setup. In our case we are going to use the “launch program” option.
visual studio code available configuration
Our configuration file will look something like this:
 {
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "program": "${workspaceRoot}/app.js"
        }
    ]
}
The configuration can have multiple entry that can be accessed by the dropdown previously used.

Setting the config

The config requires two main information. The first is the Program that we would like to run, this can actually be changed with whatever program you are currently running from the command line. When writing a command you will probably just use the name of the package ( depending how it is installed ), for example “Jasmine init”.

Node will automatically know that you are looking in reality for a package within the node_modules folder called Jasmine. Unfortunately our Debug configuration file is not that clever and will require you to specify the complete path.
You can use ${workspaceFolder} to select the workspace root, and then form the rest of the path required to reach the entry js file of your package. In the case of Jasmine-es6 the path will look something like:
  "${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/jasmine-es6/bin/jasmine.js"
Running the above is the equivalent of running the command Jasmine-es6 in the command line. This will work, but in our case we want to be more specific and actually just run a specific spec file.
In a command line scenario I would run the following line:
 jasmine-es6 "/tests/Tests1spec.js"
To add parameter in our configuration we need to use the specify the args array:
 "args": [
"${workspaceFolder}\\tests\\Tests1spec.js"
]
If you use backslash instead than forward slash, you will have to escape them ( as shown above)

Conclusion

The above post is aimed at supporting you and hopefully save you some time. The debugging feature of Visual Studio Code are quite extensive ( I debugger PHP in the past and it worked perfectly).  Not that everything is set up, you can start debugging by clicking the green arrow in the debug page, or just by pressing F5 from your keyboard (make sure to add breakpoint where you would like the add to break).

There may be better method to debug, and most people would have webpack setup to support them in the traspilation and test run, but I wanted to go against current and try something different.

As always I am happy to receive any comment that can support the future readers.

I complete the post wit the complete file below:

 {
    // Use IntelliSense to learn about possible Node.js debug attributes.
    // Hover to view descriptions of existing attributes.
    // For more information, visit: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=830387
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "node",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "Launch Program",
            "program": "${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/Jasmine-es6/bin/jasmine.js",
            "args": [
                "${workspaceRoot}/tests/Test1spec.js"
        }
    ]
}

 

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