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

Behat

https://docs.behat.org/en/latest/

unittest2

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

PHP

Python

Category

Functional/Acceptance Testing

Unit Testing

General info

Behat is an open source Behavior-Driven Development framework for PHP.

Behat uses the StoryBDD subtype of behaviour-driven development (the other subtype is SpecBDD); This means the tests we write with Behat look rather like stories than code. It is inspired by Ruby's Cucumber

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

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

To enable Behat to test a website, you need to add Mink and a browser emulator (selenium maybe, though slow) to the mix. Mink methods are the connector between Behat and an extensive list of available drivers, and they provide a consistent testing API.

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

Behat can be used for Data Integrity Testing to verify that database operations are functioning properly

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

One can use the 'Doctrinefixturesbundle' to create the required fixture loaders and load them in our Behat scenarios when required, using the 'BeforeScenario' hook.

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

Behat allows 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.

By use of third party libraries like moodle-behat-generators

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)

By using third party libraries like Mock and Prophecy

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

Yes

You can use tags to group features and scenarios together, independent of your file and directory structure

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