Leading JavaScript Testing Frameworks

The JavaScript testing framework is a dynamic framework based on JS, which is well known for its ease of use in both front-end and back-end development.

Lets discuss on widely used JavaScript test frameworks in the market and its benefits.

1.        MochaJS

Mocha has been one of the most popular JavaScript testing frameworks since 2011. It operates on Node.js and provides compatibility for both frontend and backend asynchronous testing. With firm documentation support, Mocha has proven to be a well-established framework over the past few years. Hosted on Github, Mocha is recognized for its flexibility. Chai is one of the most popular open-source assertion libraries used with Mocha. Chai is a BDD/TDD assertion library with an abundance of plugins and extensions. Mocha is an older and more mature open-source project than Jest. The community is large and provides a vast variety of documentation, StackOverflow questions, and support articles for if you get stuck in configuration.

Key Advantages:

• Provides compatibility for both frontend and backend testing
• NodeJS debugger is supported which makes error tracing easier
• Accurate reporting
• Provides support for all browsers including the headless Chrome library
• Very convenient framework for the developers/testers to write test cases

2.        JEST

JEST is arguably the most popular JavaScript testing framework used and maintained by Facebook. The JEST testing framework provides a “zero-configuration” testing experience.

JEST is a highly preferred framework for applications based on React. It provides an unambiguous and very convenient user interface. This framework comes bundled with some interesting features like snapshot testing and a built-in tool for code coverage. There are also a lot of resources available online for JEST.

Key Advantages:

• Compatible with NodeJS, React, Angular, VueJS and other Babel based projects
• Standard syntax with documentation support
• Very fast and high performance
• Managing tests with larger objects using Live Snapshots

3.        Jasmine

Introduced in 2010, Jasmine is an open-source JavaScript testing framework. It is capable of testing all types of JavaScript applications. This framework supports BDD. Using Jasmine, one can perform test cases similar to user behavior on a website. Jasmine is highly influenced by JS Spec, Rspec.

Jasmine is very beneficial for front-end testing. It includes both visibility testing as well as the responsiveness testing of UI across various devices with different resolutions. One can also automate user behavior with custom delay and wait time for simulating the actual user behavior.

Key Advantages:

• Provides small, clean and straightforward syntax for easy testing
• Does not require any Document Object Model (DOM)
• Provides support for both front-end and back-end tests
• Ease in coding
• Strong documentation and community support

4. Karma

It is another popular open-source productive testing environment. It allows a QA to perform tests for an application in different environments. Karma allows the application script to be executed on real browsers and devices like phones and tablets. Karma aims to provide a testing environment for developers wherein they don’t need to set up loads of configurations. Instead, they can just run the tests and get instant feedback.

Key Advantages:

• Supports integrations with top CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Travis, and Semaphore
• Tests on real devices and browsers are possible
• Provides support for headless environments like PhantomJS
• Supports remote testing directly from a terminal or IDE
• Karma is framework agnostic, which means one can describe tests with popular frameworks like Mocha, Jasmine.

5.        Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API. This API is used to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools protocol. One of its major limitations is that it works only with Chrome and Chromium. The Puppeteer can be used for browser-specific applications like page structure tests, taking website screenshots, and can crawl/capture content for Single Page Applications (SPA). Although Puppeteer has been recently introduced in the testing landscape, it has already been adopted by wide group of developers/testers and the future for Puppeteer looks promising.

Key Advantages:

• Easy automating UI testing, form submission, and keyboard inputs
• Easy generation of screenshots and PDFs of webpages
• Support for testing chrome extensions
• It is easy to diagnose performance issues on a site using the timeline trace.

Conclusion:

Which framework will work best for you is entirely dependent on what your project demands. If you have a large project with the need for flexibility and customization then Mocha is probably the choice for you. If you have a smaller project and don’t need the extra setup and configuration up front, Jest is probably the better option. All frameworks mentioned above has its own benefits, so the choice is yours as to which framework is going to be the best solution for you and your team.