Javascript Sandbox unit testing

Question

I am using QUnit, which is excellent.

I have enclosed my JS app in the (function () {})(); sandbox. This hides a lot of code that I don't want public, but I also need to test that code.

Here is an example of how this works:

(function () {  

    var PublicAPI = window.PublicAPI = {};        
    PublicAPI.publicFunction = function (foo) {
        PrivateAPI.privateFunction(foo);
        return 'bar';
    };

    var PrivateAPI = {};
    PrivateAPI.privateFunction: function (foo) {
       // Make secret stuff that never gets returned to the public
       // Could be an AJAX call.
    }

})();

So here I can easily unit test PublicAPI.publicFunction, but how will I test PrivateAPI.privateFunction ?

Answer 1

This similar question sums it up pretty well... The easiest is to not deal with the private methods, as they can change if they want... The public methods are the ones that need testing. If you want to test your internal functions you need to leave a hook of some sort for qunit to be able to find.

Answer 2

You can't. There is no way to access it from outside of that scope. Your only hope is to integration test it, i.e. test functions on the globally available object that are using your internal functions.

Better yet: don't make private functions. What's the big deal?