Dynamic karma.conf.js for Jenkins

Karma-runner is a great way to run jasmine javascript test suites. One trick to make it easy to customize karma's runtime behavior is to take advantage of the fact that karma's config file is javascript - not just json, so it's easy to wire up karma.conf.js to change karma's behavior based on an environment variable.

For example, when run interactively karma can watch files, and rerun the test suite in Chrome when a file changes; but when Jenkins runs karma, karma should run through the test suite once in phantomJs, then exit. Here's one way to set that up.

First, if you generate your karma config.js file using karma init, and wire up the file to run your test suite in Chrome and watch files for changes, then you wind up with a karma.conf.js (or whatever.js) file structured like this:

module.exports = function(config) {
    config.set( { /* bunch of settings */ } );
}

To wire up the jenkins-phantomjs support - just pull the settings object out to its own variable, and wire up a block of code to change the settings when your favorite environment variable is set, and wire up Jenkins to set that environment variable ...

module.exports = function(config) {
    var settings = { /* bunch of settings */ },
        i, overrides = {};
    if ( process.env.KARMA_PHANTOMJS ) {  // jenkins is running karma ...
        overrides = {
            singleRun: true,
            reporters: ['dots', 'junit' ],
            junitReporter: {
                outputFile: 'test-result.xml'
            },
            browsers: [ 'PhantomJS', 'PhantomJS_custom'],
            customLaunchers: {
                PhantomJS_custom: {
                    flags: [ '--load-images=true'], 
                    options: {
                        windowName: 'my-window'
                    },
                    debug:true
                }
            }
         };
    }
    for ( i in overrides ) {
        settings[i] = overrides[i];
    }
    config.set( settings );
}

Jenkins can run Karma test suites with a shell script, and Jenkins' JUnit plugin harvests and publishes the test results; works great!