Overview

Jest

Stacks15.2K

Followers4.1K

Votes175

SinonJS

Stacks3.5K

Followers38

Votes1

GitHub Stars9.8K

Forks774

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.

🔥 Trending in Testing Frameworks on StackShare

Oglama™

Testing Frameworks

Oglama

Try it View Docs Alternatives

Try

Advice on Jest, SinonJS

Dane

Feb 7, 2020

Needs adviceon

Cypress

Jest

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.

836k views836k

Comments

Anonymous

Feb 6, 2020

Needs advice

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.

290k views290k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jest	SinonJS
Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.	It is a really helpful library when you want to unit test your code. It supports spies, stubs, and mocks. The library has cross browser support and also can run on the server using Node.js.
Familiar Approach: Built on top of the Jasmine test framework, using familiar expect(value).toBe(other) assertions;Mock by Default: Automatically mocks CommonJS modules returned by require(), making most existing code testable;Short Feedback Loop: DOM APIs are mocked and tests run in parallel via a small node.js command line utility	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 9.8K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 774
Stacks 15.2K	Stacks 3.5K
Followers 4.1K	Followers 38
Votes 175	Votes 1
Pros & Cons
Pros 36 Open source 32 Mock by default makes testing much simpler 23 Testing React Native Apps 20 Parallel test running 16 Fast Cons 4 Ambiguous configuration 4 Documentation 3 Difficult 2 Multiple error messages for same error 2 Difficult to run single test/describe/file	Pros 1 Open source Cons 1 More concepts than Jest 1 Less questions and answers on StackOverflow than Jest
Integrations
No integrations available	Node.js TypeScript

What are some alternatives to Jest, SinonJS?

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.

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.

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!