How to log correctly with Mocha/Velocity (Meteor testing)? - testing

Question

What's the correct way to go about logging out information about tests using the velocity framework with Meteor?
I have some mocha tests that I'd like to output some values from, I guess it'd be good if the output could end up in the logs section of the velocity window... but there doesn't seem to be any documentation anywhere?

Answer 1

I haven't seen it documented either.
I don't know how to log messages into the Velocity window, though I don't like the idea of logging into the UI.
What I've done is created a simple Logger object that wraps all of my console.{{method}} calls and prevents logging if process.env.IS_MIRROR. That will only output test framework messages on the terminal. If I need to debug an specific test, I activate logging output for a while on Logger.

Answer 2

This is a terrible hack. It will expose an unprotected method that writes to your DB.
But it works.
I was really annoyed to lack this feature so I digged into the Velocity code to find out that they have a VelocityLogs collection that is globally accessible. But you need to access it from your production, not testing, instance to see it in the web reporter.
So it then took me a good while to get Meteor CORS enabled, but I finally managed - even for Firefox - to create a new route within IronRouter to POST log messages to. (CORS could be nicer with this suggestion - but you really shouldn't expose this anyway.)
You'll need to meteor add http for this.
Place outside of /tests:
if Meteor.isServer
Router.route 'log', ->
if #request.method is 'OPTIONS'
#response.setHeader 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin', '*'
#response.setHeader 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'POST, OPTIONS'
#response.setHeader 'Access-Control-Max-Age', 1000
#response.setHeader 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'origin, x-csrftoken, content-type, accept'
#response.end()
return
if #request.method is 'POST'
logEntry = #request.body
logEntry.level ?= 'unspecified'
logEntry.framework ?= 'log hack'
logEntry.timestamp ?= moment().format("HH:mm:ss.SSS")
_id = VelocityLogs.insert(logEntry)
#response.setHeader 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin', '*'
#response.end(_id)
return
, where: 'server'
Within tests/mocha/lib or similar, as a utility function:
#log = (message, framework, level) ->
HTTP.post "http://localhost:3000/log",
data: { message: message, framework: framework, level: level}
(error) -> console.dir error
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