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Jest vs SinonJS: What are the differences?
Introduction
In web development, testing plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality and reliability of software. Two popular testing frameworks, Jest and SinonJS, provide different functionalities that aid in the testing process.
Test Runner vs. Test Spies and Stubs: Jest is a test runner that provides a complete testing solution, including test execution, assertion library, and mocking capabilities. On the other hand, SinonJS is primarily focused on providing test spies, stubs, and mocks for easy mocking and verification of JavaScript function calls.
Built-in Matchers vs. Standalone Functions: Jest comes with a rich set of built-in matchers that simplify the process of writing assertions. These matchers cover a wide range of scenarios and provide helpful error messages. SinonJS, however, doesn't provide built-in matchers but offers standalone functions for stubbing and spying functionalities.
Snapshot Testing vs. Behavior Verification: Jest includes a feature called snapshot testing, which allows developers to capture the output of a component or function and compare it against a stored snapshot. This feature simplifies the process of detecting unintended changes in the output. SinonJS, on the other hand, focuses more on behavior verification, allowing developers to verify if specific functions were called or not.
Mocking vs. Test Spies: Jest provides a mocking capability that enables developers to replace dependencies with mock implementations. This allows for isolated testing of individual modules or components. SinonJS, on the other hand, focuses on test spies, which allow developers to track function calls and verify their behavior without affecting their implementation.
Code Coverage Reporting: Jest includes built-in code coverage reporting, which provides insights into the percentage of code that is covered by tests. This information is valuable in identifying areas of code that may need additional testing. SinonJS, however, doesn't provide built-in code coverage reporting and requires additional configuration to integrate with code coverage tools.
Community Support and Adoption: Jest has gained significant popularity and has a large and active community. It is widely adopted in the JavaScript ecosystem and has excellent documentation and support resources. Although SinonJS also has a strong community, it may have a slightly smaller user base in comparison to Jest.
In summary, Jest is a comprehensive testing solution with built-in matchers, mocking capabilities, snapshot testing, and code coverage reporting. It is widely adopted and has a thriving community. SinonJS, on the other hand, focuses on providing test spies and stubs for behavior verification and mocking, but requires additional configuration for code coverage reporting. Both frameworks have their strengths and are valuable in different testing scenarios.
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 SinonJS
- Open source1
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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 SinonJS
- More concepts than Jest1
- Less questions and answers on StackOverflow than Jest1