Top 5 JavaScript Testing Frameworks to Choose from in 2020
What are your best options when it comes to automation testing for your critical projects?
The world of JavaScript has offered us plenty of options for pretty much everything we require from the designing stage through to the testing stage of a program. JavaScript has client-side development frameworks for the frontend, server-side development frameworks for the backend, and also testing frameworks for automation testing purposes.
The variety of JavaScript testing frameworks currently available for automation testers have become a cause of confusion for many. It is fairly obvious that more options you have, the more difficult it is to decide on an option stick to it. This article sets out to explore the 5 best JavaScript testing frameworks that you should try in 2020.
What is a testing framework?
First of all to get a clear picture of the topic, let’s clarify what a “testing framework” actually is.
A testing framework is an execution environment for automated tests. It is the overall system in which the tests will be automated. A testing framework generally follows a set of guidelines or rules used for creating and designing test cases. These guidelines could include coding standards, test-data handling methods, object repositories, processes for storing test results, or information on how to access external resources. Such a framework is also comprised of a combination of practices and tools that are designed to help QA professionals to do their testings more efficiently.
The Testing framework is responsible for:
- Defining the format in which to express expectations
- Creating a mechanism to hook into or drive the application under test
- Executing the tests
- Reporting results
What is the importance of using a testing framework in software development?
Testing as we know it is a key stage of the Software Development Life Cycle. Therefore, when developing software, the necessary attention should be paid for the testing stage. If we have a group of testers and suppose if each module implements a unique strategy then the time needed for the tester to become productive in the new environment will take longer. To handle this we cannot make changes to the automation environment for each new application that comes along. For this purpose, we use a testing framework that is application-independent and has the capability to expand with the requirements of each application.
Utilizing a framework for automated testing will increase a team’s test speed and efficiency, improve test accuracy, and will reduce test maintenance costs as well as lower risks. Therefore a framework is essential to an efficient automated testing process for a few key reasons:
- Improved test efficiency
- Lower maintenance costs
- Minimal manual intervention
- Maximum test coverage
- Reusability of code
Now let’s dive into the list of the 5 best JavaScript testing frameworks to learn in 2020. The rankings of these frameworks are based on popularity under npm downloads.
1. Jest
Jest ranks as #1 in the npm charts based on the number of npm downloads over the year 2020. Jest is the testing framework created and maintained by Facebook. Jest framework’s primary focus is simplicity. It is based on Jasmine which we will be discussing later in this article. Over time, Facebook replaced most of its functionality and added a lot of features on top of it which made Jest more and more unique. Jest is being widely used with Selenium for JavaScript automated testing. It provides good cross-browser support for automated browser testing.
Reasons to opt for Jest
- The biggest benefit of using Jest is the minimal configuration required to set up
- Jest is primarily used for testing React applications which is the most popular front-end JavaScript framework, but that doesn’t mean you’re restricted to using it to test only apps written with the framework. You can use it to test Node, Angular, and Vue applications as well
- Jest is considered to be faster for big projects with many test files by implementing a clever parallel testing mechanism
- Clear and convenient UI
- Clear documentation and standard syntax of coding
- Snapshot testing is a great tool to ensure that your application’s UI doesn’t unexpectedly change between releases
- Jest comes with a wide API, not requiring you to include additional libraries unless you really need to
2. Mocha
The #2 on our list, Mocha is a JavaScript testing framework that runs both on Node.js and in the browser and is widely used for asynchronous testing. It is known to be a feature-rich JavaScript framework. Tests in Mocha run serially and the reports are accurate and flexible. Mocha is a little harder to set up and divided into more libraries but it is more flexible and open to extensions.
Reasons to opt for Mocha
- Works for frontend as well as backend
- Supports any browser including headless chrome library
- If you want a flexible configuration, including the libraries that you particularly need, then Mocha can be a great choice
- Mocha has many plugins and extension to test unique scenarios
- Mocha helps you to easily map exceptions with the relevant test cases
- Since Mocha is somewhat old when compared to other competing frameworks, lots of tutorial and documents are available online
3. Karma
Karma which as at #3 on our list is more precisely a test runner. Karma is a productive testing environment that supports all the popular test description framework within itself such as Jasmine, Mocha, QUnit, etc. And also those tests can be executed not only in the browsers of your choice but also on the platform of your choice (desktop, phone, tablet.) Karma is highly configurable, integrates with popular continuous integration (CI/CD) packages (Jenkins, Travis, and Semaphore) and has excellent plugin support.
Reasons to opt for Karma
- Karma helps you to easily perform automation testing on real devices and browsers
- Supports tests written in most of the popular frameworks
- Supports test case debugging using Chrome as well as Webstorm
- You can control the entire workflow directly from your IDE or CMD
- Since Karma is open source, you can find a lot of help from the community
4. Jasmine
Jasmine is a JavaScript behavior-driven development test framework. Jasmine is the testing framework that Jest was originally based on and is mostly used for asynchronous testing. Jasmine runs on Node.js and allows accurate and flexible bug reporting. It has been around for the longest and therefore it has a huge amount of articles, tools, and questions answered in various forums that were all created by the community over many years.
Jasmine is useful for a testing frontend for visibility, click clarity as well as the responsiveness of the UI in different resolutions. Jasmine allows us to automate user behavior with customs delays and wait time to simulate actual user behavior later on.
Reasons to opt for Jasmine
- The biggest strength of Jasmine is its compatibility across every framework or libraries of your choice, making it one of the most flexible JavaScript testing frameworks
- Supports Frontend as well as Backend tests
- Jasmine has widespread Angular support for all its versions and it is recommended in the official Angular documentation
- The massive community backing up Jasmine has all kinds of support which come in the form of libraries, blog posts or video tutorials
- The learning curve is very smooth for Jasmine. You get pretty impressive documentation too.
- The coding is pretty similar to writing in natural language
5. Puppeteer
Coming at #5 on our list is Puppeteer, an excellent test execution framework built by a team at Google. It is a Node.js based automated testing library that provides an API that helps the users to control Chrome by overriding the standard DevTools protocol. Many scenarios that can be done manually in the browser can be automated with the help of Puppeteer.
Puppeteer is primarily used for applications specific to the browser like crawl test, page structure test, take screenshots and even capture pre-rendered content for single-page applications (SPA). Puppeteer supports features from ES6such as async and await. It offers automation support for UI testing, form submission, and keyboard inputs.
Reasons to opt for Puppeteer
- Puppeteer allows the users to mock resources, thereby avoiding reliability, consistency and speed issues
- Ability to set custom resolutions and sizes for the browser
- Support to test chrome extensions
- Automation support for form submission, UI testing, and keyboard inputs
- Supports ES6 functionalities like await and async
- Since Puppeteer is maintained by Google, it has a big community that uses and develops tools and wrappers around it
- Since it is native and uses the latest Chrome engine, it is conveniently very fast
Some final words
I have summarized 5 of the most popular JavaScript testing frameworks on-demand in 2020. There might be some confusion when it comes to the precision of the term ‘framework’ being used on Karma and Puppeteer as Karma is more of a test runner and Puppeteer is more of a library. But in the sense that both of them allow you to design automated tests that are later run without human intervention, they can be called frameworks to an extent.
The choice of selecting a framework mostly depends on the nature of the software that you are planning to test. The aim is not to master one choice from this list and use it to test every bit of software that you design. Rather, every choice has its own pros and cons and you should be clever enough to identify which piece best fits the puzzle presented by your software design. Thank you for your valuable time and happy testing! Stay safe!
