Rackspace Open Sources Whiskey Framework for Node.js Testing

As Node.js continues to gain adoption, there is an increasing need for tools to help test the applications built on it. When cloud hosting provider Rackspace started to use Node.js and ran up against the testing requirement, they wrote their own testing tool for Node.js applications called Whiskey.

Whiskey is an open source test automation stack that Rackspace is using within its own infrastructure. Although Rackspace officially announced the Whiskey project only this week, the company has been using it internally for nearly two years. Since its inception, the project has also been open source.

“We put the project on GitHub, but we didn’t have a polished Read Me and things like that,” said Tomaz Muraus, software developer at Rackspace. “We figured that now was about the right time to announce it. We’ve added features over time and at this point it’s one of the best test frameworks for Node.js.”

Alex Polvi, director of product for Rackspace, explained that Rackspace bet on Node.js early, when Node.js was still a really young product with few available tools. That’s why they decided to write their own test framework. Rackspace needed to ensure that their test stack had proper code coverage and orchestration capabilities.

“When we designed Whisky, we designed it with scalability in mind,” said Muraus.

Currently, Whiskey will run in a single process but Muraus explained that the platform has a master process that spawns child processes and communicates with them over TCP. The plan is to enable a Whiskey Node.js test to run across multiple servers.

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Rackspace Open Sources Whiskey Framework for Node.js Testing

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.