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Jest vs PhantomJS: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will explore the key differences between Jest and PhantomJS. Both Jest and PhantomJS are popular tools used by developers for testing and automation purposes. However, they have several differences in terms of features, performance, and compatibility.
Execution Environment: Jest is a testing framework built on top of Jasmine that runs in a Node.js environment. It provides a command-line interface for running tests and supports a wide range of features such as mocking, code coverage, and snapshot testing. On the other hand, PhantomJS is a headless browser that provides a web browsing context without the need for a graphical user interface. It supports web automation, allowing developers to simulate user interactions and perform tasks like taking screenshots or scraping web pages.
Browser Compatibility: Jest runs tests in a Node.js environment, meaning it does not have the functionality to accurately test browser-specific behaviors. In contrast, PhantomJS provides a full web browsing environment, allowing developers to test and automate interactions in a browser-like environment. This makes PhantomJS a better choice for testing web applications that rely heavily on browser-specific features or behaviors.
Page Rendering: While Jest can render components and perform virtual DOM diffing, it does not support actual page rendering. On the other hand, PhantomJS can render web pages and execute JavaScript within them, making it suitable for tasks that involve dynamic rendering or manipulating the DOM.
Community Support: Jest has gained significant popularity in the JavaScript community and has a large and active community of contributors. It provides extensive documentation and a wide range of plugins and integrations with popular tools. PhantomJS, on the other hand, has seen a decline in popularity in recent years and its development has been stalled. As a result, Jest has better community support and a more vibrant ecosystem.
Performance: In terms of performance, Jest has a faster test execution time compared to PhantomJS. This is mainly because Jest runs in a Node.js environment, which is typically faster than running tests in a headless browser like PhantomJS.
Ease of Setup: Jest is relatively easy to set up and configure, thanks to its built-in test runner and a simple configuration file. It also has a zero-configuration mode, where you can run tests without any setup. On the other hand, setting up PhantomJS requires installing the PhantomJS binary and configuring the desired capabilities for your tests.
In summary, Jest, being a testing framework running in a Node.js environment, is best suited for unit and integration testing, providing a wide range of features and better community support. PhantomJS, as a headless browser, is more suitable for testing web applications with browser-specific behaviors and tasks requiring actual page rendering.
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
As we all know testing is an important part of any application. To assist with our testing we are going to use both Cypress and Jest. We feel these tools complement each other and will help us get good coverage of our code. We will use Cypress for our end to end testing as we've found it quite user friendly. Jest will be used for our unit tests because we've seen how many larger companies use it with great success.
Postman will be used to do integration testing with the backend API we create. It offers a clean interface to create many requests, and you can even organize these requests into collections. It helps to test the backend API first to make sure it's working before using it in the front-end. Jest can also be used for testing and is already embedded into React. Not only does it offer unit testing support in javascript, it can also do snapshot testing for the front-end to make sure components are rendering correctly. Enzyme is complementary to Jest and offers more functions such as shallow rendering. UnitTest will be used for Python testing as it is simple, has a lot of functionality and already built in with python. Sentry will be used for keeping track of errors as it is also easily integratable with Heroku because they offer it as an add-on. LogDNA will be used for tracking logs which are not errors and is also a Heroku add-on. Its good to have a separate service to record logs, monitor, track and even fix errors in real-time so our application can run more smoothly.
Pros of Jest
- Open source36
- Mock by default makes testing much simpler32
- Testing React Native Apps23
- Parallel test running20
- Fast16
- Bundled with JSDOM to enable DOM testing13
- Mock by default screws up your classes, breaking tests8
- Out of the box code coverage7
- Promise support7
- One stop shop for unit testing6
- Great documentation3
- Assert Library Included2
- Built in watch option with interactive filtering menu1
- Preset support1
- Can be used for BDD0
- Karma0
Pros of PhantomJS
- Scriptable web browser13
- Depends on QT3
- No ECMAScript 62
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Cons of Jest
- Documentation4
- Ambiguous configuration4
- Difficult3
- Many bugs still not fixed months/years after reporting2
- Multiple error messages for same error2
- Difficult to run single test/describe/file2
- Ambiguous2
- Bugged2
- BeforeAll timing out makes all passing tests fail1
- Slow1
- Reporter is too general1
- Unstable1
- Bad docs1
- Still does't support .mjs files natively1
- Can't fail beforeAll to abort tests1
- Interaction with watch mode on terminal0
Cons of PhantomJS
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What is Jest?
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