Category Software Engineering

We are continuing an introduction to RSpec, a testing tool for Ruby. After covering the very basics in the first part of this series, we will now explore other important and frequently used features of RSpec: use of subject, let helper method, before hooks and exception handling. Along the way we will encounter some more […]

NPM is a Node.js package manager that comes bundled with the installation of Node.js. It keeps track of all dependencies for your Node.js projects and gives you full control over managing them. NPM makes is easy to reuse thousands of existing open source packages that solve a multitude of common problems, as well as share […]

Mocking is a technique in test-driven development (TDD) that involves using fake dependent objects or methods in order to write a test. There are a couple of reasons why you may decide to use mock objects: As a replacement for objects that don’t exist yet. When you are working with objects which return non-deterministic values […]

Software testing is slowly becomming second nature for many developers. Knowing that your changes aren’t breaking any existing feature gives a huge confidence boost when deploying. The PHP community isn’t the first to adopt the methologies of TDD (Test-Driven Development) but it’s catching up quickly with the rest. The testing community is growing rapidly and […]

Introduction A big obstacle to the mission to treat infrastructure as code is the way we test it. In the past, the practice of writing automated tests for infrastructure did not exist. Instead, the process was manual, repetitive and error-prone: we would log into a remote machine and run various commands to verify the system. […]

The Semaphore Community is open for contributions by all developers who would like to write an article for our knowledge base. We encourage you to cover topics you are passionate about and have experience with. Nevertheless, it is useful to also have a general list of topics that we are interested in covering. Here’s an […]

Kerodon provides a friendly API for interacting with web pages in tests. With Kerodon you write a test from the perspective of a user interacting with a web application from a browser. It provides helpers for visiting a page, clicking on a button or a link, interacting with a form and inspecting the page content. […]

Semaphore is excited about building a collection of technical articles that help everyone become a well-rounded software developer. Our goal is to cover both cutting-edge technology and timeless topics on building products and collaborating within an engineering team. For this reason, the Semaphore blog is open for contributions and the goal of this article is […]

Introduction This article explains how to format Semaphore tutorials. By following the details in this guide and the companion Style Guide, your tutorial will match all of the Semaphore guidelines. Where can I submit the completed tutorial? If you have an approved writing sample and topic, you can submit the tutorial as a link to […]

Introduction Capistrano is a popular tool for web application deployment, especially in the Ruby ecosystem where it originated. But Capistrano is being used to deploy applications made in any programming language. It is a perfectly fine tool for deploying Node.js projects too. in the Ruby ecosystem. This article will explain how to set up a […]

Introduction OpenShift is Red Hat’s cloud computing platform as a service. It’s based on open source OpenShift Origin project. The platform officially supports a number of languages: Java, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Python and Perl. Since the platform is open source, other languages and platforms are supported by community-maintained cartridges. A cartridge is a set of […]

Gradle is a free Java build tool for project automation, similar to Ant and Maven. It’s used by software developers working in Java for running common repetitive tasks in project lifecycle, like compiling code, resolving dependencies, packaging, unit testing, code execution and deployment. Google positioned Gradle as the build system of choice for Android and […]

It’s a shame that, almost since its creation, JavaScript had been considered more of a quick hack than an actual programming language. Lacking the tools and the community that other popular languages had, for a long time it was a language that many people enjoyed to hate. Fortunately, with the inception of Node.js, JavaScript got […]

Introduction Dependencies are essential for modern development. They save you time and energy. Functionalities you may need for your app like sending e-mails or logging can all be easily included as third party libraries. Thanks to the open source movement, there are many high quality packages to choose from. In the early days, including third-party […]