Imaginative Thinking.ca

What the Heck can you destruct a destructor?

Hey Brad ECMAScript 2015 added Object Destructuring assignment but I was wondering can you destruct a nested object?

I see so the question is what if I was given req.body but I’m just interested in req.body.device.id do I have to use the full name or can I destruct the object so that I only get a reference to the ID?

const req = { body: { device: { id: 'hello', }, hello: 'world', }, };

De-Constructicon by any other name

Hey Brad I was using Object Destruction but I already have a variable in my scope with the same name as the object property how can I deal with this collision?

Ah yes the fact that when destructing an object the local variable which holds the value of the property pluckedoff the object will by default be the same name as the object property does mean that you need to watch how you name other…

What the heck Mocha and bluebird.done() is causing a crash

Hey Brad I joined a new project and was starting out by fixing some linter issues in our test code when I noticed that when running the full test run the tests just crashed. They were working before I fixed up some linter issues but now I get the error that superagent(the NPM module we use in our tests to make HTTP request to our service we’re testing) failed with a 500 but instead of just…

What the Heck is Express?

Hi Brad, I started looking into doing web development and have been hearing about Express; what the heck is that?

Express is a framework for Node.js, if you want to know more about Node.js you can check out my post What the Heck is Node.js. Express is an open source framework designed to make developing websites, web applications, and APIs in Node.js much easier.

Why use Express?

Express helps…

How the heck do you cherry pick in Git?

Hi Brad, in my code base I’ve been off working in a branch creating a new feature. In my efforts I’ve made a few other improvements to enable my new feature to work properly. The new feature I’m working on is not ready but the other improvements are and I’d like to cherry-pick them over to my main line. How do I do that?

Good question; assuming your using Git and your other improvements were…

Hey Brad so I read Swaggerize your API Documentation and I’m sold but what about protected APIs? How do I use Swagger to hit APIs which require an authentication token?

Swagger has you covered for cases where your API requires some sort of authentication token be included in the request; all you have to do is declare the authentication types your service supports and then mark each protected API…

Swagger, huh what is it good for?

Hey Brad I keep hearing people talk about how we should use swagger to document our APIs but what the heck is that?

Good question, I too was confused by what exactly Swagger was because we talk about it as an API documentation tool similar to JSDocs but when you Google Swagger it appears to be so much more than that.

Swagger is not a code document generator like JSDocs or Doxygenbut a framework…

Swaggerize your API Documentation

Hey Brad how the heck do I use Swagger to document my Node.js service APIs?

The Swagger tool which generates the documentation is a command line utility which when run will read the OpenApi Specification (OAS) description you created for your APIs and outputs HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You can then host that generated code anywhere you wish.

One option for using Swagger to generate your API…

What the Heck is Sinon

Hey Brad I want to write some unit tests, that is tests which don’t need me to stand up and seed a database just to test my codes logic, but how do I mock out calls to backing functions I don’t want to actually make during the test?

That is a good question, in my article What the Heck is Mocha I explained that mochais a testing framework for running and defining test. It is only the framework;…

How the Heck do you test Async code with Mocha?

Hey Brad I have a function which returns a promise, how the heck do I test that with Mocha?

TL;DR Either call the done callback or simply return the promise. Checkout Things to Watch out For when testing Promises

No worries I can help, the mocha testing framework does support testing asynchronous code. The only catch is that you need to tell mochathat the code you are testing is asynchronous…

What the Heck is Mocha?

Hey Brad I’m starting to write tests for a Node application and I hear I’m suppose to use mocha, what the heck is that exactly?

mocha is a testing framework for JavaScript/Node. It includes a command line tool for invoking tests and APIs for defining and setting up tests.

Running Mocha Tests

To run tests with mocha you can use the command line tool > mocha. This tool by defaults looks for tests…

Hey Brad I am writing some code and in a review someone said I should add some log messages but I don’t know what I should be logging. What purpose do the log messages serve and what information should I be logging?

TL;DR See Summary section below

What is a log?

A log is a continual feed of what the application is doing; it’s the stream of actions being performed. A log has no beginning or…

What the Heck are Automated Tests?

Hey Brad we are being asked to write automated tests with every code change, this is just more effort which is slowing us down and I don’t see the value. What the heck are automated tests for?

I hear you, you spend all this effort making your changes and verifying they are working only to then have to go back and write a bunch of automated tests because you were told you should; what a bother.

T…

Hey Brad I’m getting a linter error no-param-reassign what is up with that?

function foo(bar) { bar = 4; return bar; }

The thing to remember about ECMAScript is that it passes by reference.

So when you pass a variable into a function you are not passing the variable value but a reference to the location in memory where the value is located.

const u = 5; // u <== a memory location…

What the Heck is Jade?

Hi Brad, I started looking into doing web development and have been hearing about Jade; what the heck is that?

Jade is a templating language to simplify the creation of HTML documents.

Please note that when I was learning about Jade it was named Jade however it was renamed to Pug. The rename was brought up over a conflict regarding the name Jade; Jade lost and had to rename. I will be referring…

What the Heck is Pug?

Hi Brad, I started looking into doing web development and have been hearing about Pug; what the heck is that?

Pug is a templating language to simplify the creation of HTML documents.

Please note that Pug prior to 2016 was called Jade. The rename was brought up over a conflict regarding the name Jade; Jade lost and had to rename. When you see references online for Jade just know that they are…

What the Heck should I use Bluebird.done() with Mocha?

Hi Brad, I’m working in Node.js and am writing automated tests using Mocha. Most of our code uses Promises and we tend to terminate our promise chains with the .done() API. Should I be doing that in our test code too? Should I use Bluebird.done() with Mocha?

I ran into some code in a project I work on that does exactly that. In our test code we call our function which we were testing and it…