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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Javascript Testing Framework
  5. Capybara vs Mocha

Capybara vs Mocha

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Mocha
Mocha
Stacks10.8K
Followers3.0K
Votes430
Capybara
Capybara
Stacks858
Followers191
Votes15

Capybara vs Mocha: What are the differences?

Developers describe Capybara as "Acceptance test framework for web applications". Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem. On the other hand, Mocha is detailed as "Simple, flexible, fun javascript test framework for node.js & the browser". Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

Capybara can be classified as a tool in the "Testing Frameworks" category, while Mocha is grouped under "Javascript Testing Framework".

Some of the features offered by Capybara are:

  • No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.
  • Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.
  • Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.

On the other hand, Mocha provides the following key features:

  • browser support
  • simple async support, including promises
  • test coverage reporting

"Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps" is the primary reason why developers consider Capybara over the competitors, whereas "Open source" was stated as the key factor in picking Mocha.

Capybara and Mocha are both open source tools. It seems that Mocha with 18.1K GitHub stars and 2.44K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Capybara with 8.84K GitHub stars and 1.29K GitHub forks.

Coursera, Asana, and Typeform are some of the popular companies that use Mocha, whereas Capybara is used by GrowthHackers, sQuidd.io, and Indiegogo. Mocha has a broader approval, being mentioned in 399 company stacks & 272 developers stacks; compared to Capybara, which is listed in 38 company stacks and 21 developer stacks.

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Advice on Mocha, Capybara

Abigail
Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

We use Mocha for our FDA verification testing. It's integrated into Meteor, our upstream web application framework. We like how battle tested it is, its' syntax, its' options of reporters, and countless other features. Most everybody can agree on mocha, and that gets us half-way through our FDA verification and validation (V&V) testing strategy.

231k views231k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Mocha
Mocha
Capybara
Capybara

Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.

browser support;simple async support, including promises;test coverage reporting;string diff support;javascript API for running tests;proper exit status for CI support etc;auto-detects and disables coloring for non-ttys;maps uncaught exceptions to the correct test case;async test timeout support;test-specific timeouts;growl notification support;reports test durations;highlights slow tests;file watcher support;global variable leak detection
No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.;Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.;Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.;Powerful synchronization features mean you never have to manually wait for asynchronous processes to complete.
Statistics
Stacks
10.8K
Stacks
858
Followers
3.0K
Followers
191
Votes
430
Votes
15
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 137
    Open source
  • 102
    Simple
  • 81
    Promise support
  • 48
    Flexible
  • 29
    Easy to add support for Generators
Cons
  • 3
    Cannot test a promisified functions without assertion
  • 2
    No assertion count in results
  • 1
    Not as many reporter options as Jest
Pros
  • 12
    Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps
  • 2
    Synchronous with Rack::Test
  • 1
    Fast with Rack::Test
Cons
  • 1
    Hard to make reproducible tests when using with browser
Integrations
No integrations available
Rails
Rails

What are some alternatives to Mocha, Capybara?

Jasmine

Jasmine

Jasmine is a Behavior Driven Development testing framework for JavaScript. It does not rely on browsers, DOM, or any JavaScript framework. Thus it's suited for websites, Node.js projects, or anywhere that JavaScript can run.

Jest

Jest

Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

It is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Cypress

Cypress

Cypress is a front end automated testing application created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

CodeceptJS

CodeceptJS

It is a modern end to end testing framework with a special BDD-style syntax. The test is written as a linear scenario of user's action on a site. Each test is described inside a Scenario function with I object passed into it.

Cucumber

Cucumber

Cucumber is a tool that supports Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) - a software development process that aims to enhance software quality and reduce maintenance costs.

Protractor

Protractor

Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

AVA

AVA

Even though JavaScript is single-threaded, IO in Node.js can happen in parallel due to its async nature. AVA takes advantage of this and runs your tests concurrently, which is especially beneficial for IO heavy tests. In addition, test files are run in parallel as separate processes, giving you even better performance and an isolated environment for each test file.

TestCafe

TestCafe

It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports.

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