Jest vs Venus.js: What are the differences?
Developers describe Jest as "Painless JavaScript Unit Testing". Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine. On the other hand, Venus.js is detailed as "*Where bugs go to die *". It is a testing tool for JavaScript (JS), which simplifies running unit tests. When you are developing a browser-based project in JS, you'll want to create unit tests and run them frequently. Typically, you'll write a unit test using some library, such as Mocha or Jasmine. These libraries let you define testcases (or "specs" if you are following a BDD style), and provide APIs for writing assertions.
Jest and Venus.js can be categorized as "Javascript Testing Framework" tools.
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, Venus.js provides the following key features:
- Use Simple annotations in your tests to specify which testing library you want to use, the file you are testing, other file dependencies, and a test harness template
- Quickly run your browser-based tests directly from the command line using PhantomJS
- Run your tests from the command line in multiple browsers (running locally or remotely) at the same time
Jest is an open source tool with 31K GitHub stars and 4.4K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Jest's open source repository on GitHub.