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AVA vs TwistedTrial comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between AVA and TwistedTrial?

AVA

https://github.com/avajs/ava

TwistedTrial

https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedTrial
Programming language

JavaScript

Python

Category

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

General info

Futuristic, new, fast and concurrent JavaScript test runner with simple test syntax

AVA is a test runner for Node.js with a concise API, detailed error output. JS is a single-threaded but Node.JS is a parallel due to it's async behaviour. Ava leverages that and it can run tests concurrently

Trial is a unit testing framework for Python built by Twisted Matrix labs

Trial is composed of two parts: First is a command-line test runner, which can be run on plain Python unit tests and can do automated unit-test discovery across files, modules, or even arbitrarily nested packages. Second is a test library, derived from Python's 'unittest.TestCase'
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

However Ava supports the TAP format which allows us to use the tap-xunit reporter to produce xUnit (JUnit) XML

No

Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

You can write tests for the DOM with Ava, testing front-end components is easy with Ava

Yes

Front-end components can be tested for example adding a web front-end using simple twisted.web.resource.Resource objects
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Ava utilizes the async I/O nature of Node and runs concurrent tests on NodeJs applications' back-endsA node server can have its endpoints tested with Ava

Yes

Server-side behaviour can be tested with Trial, it has various functions for this in the twisted.web.Resource package
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

Using Ava's ava-fixture library it supports fixtures

Yes

Trial supports various fixture methods such as 'setUp()' and 'tearDown' functions fixture for normal semantics of setup, and teardown
Group fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.

Yes

Ava has support for group fixtures

Yes

Methods like 'setUp()' allow for creation of group fixtures
Generators
Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.

N/A

Through use of third party libraries like test-generator.
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

MIT License

Mocks
Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)

AVA has no mocking built in, to mock functions you can use third party libraries like Sinon.js.

Yes

Trial can access the mock library inbuilt in python for mocking purposes
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

No

There is no support for grouping tests

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework