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AVA vs unittest2 comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between AVA and unittest2?

AVA

https://github.com/avajs/ava

unittest2

https://pypi.org/project/unittest2/
Programming language

JavaScript

Python

Category

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

Unit Testing

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

Unittest2 is a newer version on the inbuilt unit testing framework unittest

To use o use unittest2 instead of unittest, simply replace 'import unittest' with 'import unittest2'. It has many new features such as: - addCleanups for better resource management; -many new assert methods; - assertRaises as context manager, with access to the exception afterwards; - test discovery and new command line options (including failfast and better handling of ctrl-C during test runs); - class and module level fixtures: setUpClass, tearDownClass, setUpModule, tearDownModule; -test skipping and expected failures and many more improvements on the API and bug fixes
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

Yes

unittest2 is a newer version of unittest which is an xUnit style framework for Python.
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 functionality and behaviour can be tested by unittest2. function by function
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

We can write tests with unittest2 to test each function for server-side behaviour
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

By use of the 'setUp()' function which is called to prepare the test fixture
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

unittest2 allows you to group your initialization code buy use of the 'setUp()' function and clean up code with a 'tearDown()' function
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

Yes

unittest2 contains generator methods in the module 'unittest.TestCase'
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

Mocks are available from the library unittest.mock which allows you to replace parts of your system under test with mock objects
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

No

There is no support for grouping tests

Yes

One can build suites either manually or use test discovery to build the suite automatically by scanning a directory
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework