Running the jQuery unit tests

Software
jquery / nginx / tutorial / unit-testing

I’m about to start contributing the jQuery project, and one thing they left out in their documentation, is how to get your testing environment up. You need to be able to serve PHP, because of the AJAX testing.

This post shows you how to configure nginx, PHP5, and FastCGI on a Debian based system. It’s been tested only on Ubuntu 12.10.

First, install the required software:

sudo apt-get install nginx php5-cgi

Then create the file /etc/nginx/sites-available/jquerytest with the following content (but remember to change the root path):

server {
        root /path/to/jquery;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        # Make site accessible from http://jquerytest/
        server_name jquerytest;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php =404;
                # A little workaround to allow POSTing to static files
                error_page 405 = $uri;
        }

        fastcgi_index   index.php;

        location ~ \.php {
                # Workaround PHP vulnerability:
                # http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,88845,page=3
                try_files $uri =404;
                # Alternatively you can set
                # cgi.fix_pathinfo = false
                # in php.ini

                include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
                keepalive_timeout 0;
                fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                fastcgi_pass    127.0.0.1:9000;
        }
}

Link this file in sites-enabled:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/jquerytest /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

We have configured nginx so it can use FastCGI to serve files, so now we need to run the FastCGI daemon. Create the file /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
BIND=127.0.0.1:9000
USER=www-data
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=15
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=1000

PHP_CGI=/usr/bin/php-cgi
PHP_CGI_NAME=`basename $PHP_CGI`
PHP_CGI_ARGS="- USER=$USER PATH=/usr/bin PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=$PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS $PHP_CGI -b $BIND"
RETVAL=0

start() {
      echo -n "Starting PHP FastCGI: "
      start-stop-daemon --quiet --start --background --chuid "$USER" --exec /usr/bin/env -- $PHP_CGI_ARGS
      RETVAL=$?
      echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME."
}
stop() {
      echo -n "Stopping PHP FastCGI: "
      killall -q -w -u $USER $PHP_CGI
      RETVAL=$?
      echo "$PHP_CGI_NAME."
}

case "$1" in
    start)
      start
  ;;
    stop)
      stop
  ;;
    restart)
      stop
      start
  ;;
    *)
      echo "Usage: php-fastcgi {start|stop|restart}"
      exit 1
  ;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

Make the file executable and start the daemon:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi
sudo /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi start

Edit your /etc/hosts so that you’ll be able to access your jQuery test page, served by nginx:

127.0.0.1 localhost jquerytest

Finally, restart nginx:

sudo service nginx restart

You are now ready to run the unit tests by visiting: http://jquerytest/test/