Chai vs Jasmine

Overview

Jasmine

Stacks4.8K

Followers1.5K

Votes187

Chai

Stacks5.4K

Followers196

Votes0

GitHub Stars8.3K

Forks707

Chai vs Jasmine: What are the differences?

Introduction: When comparing Chai and Jasmine, two popular JavaScript testing frameworks, there are key differences that developers should be aware of to make an informed decision on which one to use for their projects.

Assertion Style: Chai offers multiple assertion styles including should, expect, and assert, giving developers the flexibility to choose the style that best fits their coding preferences. On the other hand, Jasmine uses a behavior-driven development (BDD) style, where test cases are written in a more human-readable format, making it easier for non-developers to understand the test cases.
Spying and Mocking: Chai requires additional plugins like Sinon.js for spying and mocking functionalities, while Jasmine has built-in support for spies and mocks. This makes Jasmine more convenient for developers who rely heavily on these features in their testing.
Error Messaging: Chai provides more detailed and customizable error messages, helping developers pinpoint issues in their code more efficiently. Jasmine, however, offers less verbose error messages which can sometimes make troubleshooting more challenging.
Community Support: Jasmine has a larger and more established community compared to Chai, which means developers are more likely to find resources, tutorials, and plugins for Jasmine. Chai, while popular, may have slightly fewer community resources available.
Integration with Testing Frameworks: Chai can seamlessly integrate with various testing frameworks like Mocha and Jest, providing developers with more flexibility in their testing setup. Jasmine, on the other hand, is a complete testing framework by itself and may not be as easily integrated with other frameworks.
Syntax Readability: Chai's syntax is more concise and expressive, making it easier for developers to write and understand test cases quickly. Jasmine's syntax, although human-readable, can sometimes be more verbose, leading to longer test case code.

In Summary, Chai and Jasmine differ in assertion styles, spying and mocking capabilities, error messaging, community support, integration with testing frameworks, and syntax readability, offering developers a range of considerations when choosing a testing framework for their JavaScript projects.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Jasmine, Chai

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

Jasmine	Chai
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.	It is a BDD / TDD assertion library for node and the browser that can be delightfully paired with any javascript testing framework. It has several interfaces that allow the developer to choose the most comfortable. The chain-capable BDD styles provide an expressive language & readable style, while the TDD assert style provides a more classical feel.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 8.3K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 707
Stacks 4.8K	Stacks 5.4K
Followers 1.5K	Followers 196
Votes 187	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 64 Can also be used for tdd 49 Open source 19 Originally from RSpec 15 Great community 14 No dependencies, not even DOM Cons 2 Unfriendly error logs	No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to Jasmine, Chai?

Mocha

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.

Jest

Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.

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.

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.

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

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.

Ghost Inspector

It lets you create and manage UI tests that check specific functionality in your website or application. We execute these automated browser tests continuously from the cloud and alert you if anything breaks.

QUnit

QUnit is a powerful, easy-to-use JavaScript unit testing framework. It's used by the jQuery, jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile projects and is capable of testing any generic JavaScript code, including itself!

Sorry-cypress

Open-source, self-hosted alternative Cypress Dashboard.

Baretest

It is a fast and simple JavaScript test runner. It offers near-instant performance and a brainless API. It makes testing tolerable.

Related Comparisons

Chai vs Jasmine: What are the differences?

Assertion Style: Chai offers multiple assertion styles including should, expect, and assert, giving developers the flexibility to choose the style that best fits their coding preferences. On the other hand, Jasmine uses a behavior-driven development (BDD) style, where test cases are written in a more human-readable format, making it easier for non-developers to understand the test cases.
Spying and Mocking: Chai requires additional plugins like Sinon.js for spying and mocking functionalities, while Jasmine has built-in support for spies and mocks. This makes Jasmine more convenient for developers who rely heavily on these features in their testing.
Error Messaging: Chai provides more detailed and customizable error messages, helping developers pinpoint issues in their code more efficiently. Jasmine, however, offers less verbose error messages which can sometimes make troubleshooting more challenging.
Community Support: Jasmine has a larger and more established community compared to Chai, which means developers are more likely to find resources, tutorials, and plugins for Jasmine. Chai, while popular, may have slightly fewer community resources available.
Integration with Testing Frameworks: Chai can seamlessly integrate with various testing frameworks like Mocha and Jest, providing developers with more flexibility in their testing setup. Jasmine, on the other hand, is a complete testing framework by itself and may not be as easily integrated with other frameworks.
Syntax Readability: Chai's syntax is more concise and expressive, making it easier for developers to write and understand test cases quickly. Jasmine's syntax, although human-readable, can sometimes be more verbose, leading to longer test case code.

Chai vs Jasmine

Overview