Knapsack Pro

Chai vs Unitils comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Chai and Unitils?

Chai

https://www.chaijs.com

Unitils

http://www.unitils.org/summary.html
Programming language

JavaScript

Java

Category

Unit Testing

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

General info

Chai is a BDD / TDD assertion library for Node.js and the browser that can be paired with any JavaScript testing framework.

Chai is an assertion library, similar to Node's built-in assert and makes testing easier by giving you many assertions you can run against your code. It also includes a robust Plugin architecture for extending Chai's assertions and interfaces.

Unitils is an open source library whose goal is to make unit and integration testing easy and maintainable.

Unitils is divided into modules, each of them providing support for a certain aspect of your unit and integration tests. For example if you need mocking for your tests, just include unitils-mock as a dependency, If you would also want to load DbUnit data sets, just include unitils-dbunit
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

N/A

No

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

Yes

Chai can be used in a browser environment to test front-end components and functionality

Yes

You can perform unit tests on various components and functionality that make up the front-end
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Chai is used in a Node.JS environment to test server behaviour and functionality

Yes

Unitils provides support for testing the back-end through modules such as DbUnit which specifically tests your database, i.e connections setup and so on
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

N/A

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.

N/A

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.

Yes

By using chai-spec-generator plugin which will generate chai test specs from a JavaScript object

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

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)

Yes

By using by using a third party library like chai-jest-mocks which is a chai plugin that adds assertions for jest mock functions. You can also use sinon.js

Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

N/A

Other
Other useful information about the testing framework