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Jest vs TestCafe: What are the differences?
Jest: Painless JavaScript Unit Testing. Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine; TestCafe: A Node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing. 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.
Jest and TestCafe are primarily classified as "Javascript Testing Framework" and "Testing Frameworks" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by Jest are:
- 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
On the other hand, TestCafe provides the following key features:
- Functional Testing
- end-to-end testing
- e2e
Jest and TestCafe are both open source tools. It seems that Jest with 26.9K GitHub stars and 3.66K forks on GitHub has more adoption than TestCafe with 7.24K GitHub stars and 438 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Jest has a broader approval, being mentioned in 398 company stacks & 726 developers stacks; compared to TestCafe, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 6 developer stacks.
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 source35
- Mock by default makes testing much simpler31
- Testing React Native Apps22
- Parallel test running19
- Fast15
- Bundled with JSDOM to enable DOM testing13
- Mock by default screws up your classes, breaking tests8
- Out of the box code coverage7
- Promise support6
- One stop shop for unit testing6
- Great documentation3
- Assert Library Included2
- Built in watch option with interactive filtering menu1
- Preset support1
- Karma0
- Can be used for BDD0
Pros of TestCafe
- Cross-browser testing5
- Open source3
- Easy setup/installation3
- Built in waits3
- Supports Devices without extra software/package2
- UI End to End testing2
- Both client and server side debug1
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Cons of Jest
- Difficult3
- Ambiguous configuration3
- Documentation3
- Multiple error messages for same error2
- Many bugs still not fixed months/years after reporting2
- Difficult to run single test/describe/file2
- Ambiguous2
- Bugged1
- Reporter is too general1
- BeforeAll timing out makes all passing tests fail1
- 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 TestCafe
- No longer free7
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What is Jest?
What is TestCafe?
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