Knapsack Pro

Cucumber vs Test’em comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Cucumber and Test’em?

Cucumber

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-ruby

Test’em

https://github.com/testem/testem
Programming language

Ruby

JavaScript

Category

Acceptance Testing

Unit Testing

General info

An automation tool for Behavior-Driven Development

The specifications are written in plain texts, which allows them to be easily understandable for all stakeholders. Cucumber Framework also supports languages beyond Ruby e.g. Java, JavaScript and Scala.

A Unit testing test runner for JavaScript

Test'em is framework agnostic and has support for Jasmine, Qunit, Mocha and others through custom test framework adapters. It canalso run tests on all major browsers as well as Node and Phantomjs
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

It has an xUnit reporter
Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

You can test the front-end part like the GUI using cucumber and selenium, they integrate well to test your front-end.

Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

You can test back-end components such as APIs using rest & soap clients, and databases using whatever client libraries were provided by the libraries that existed in those stacks

Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

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

Using the cucumber extension aruba you can create fixures in two steps: 1.Create a fixtures-directory; 2.Create fixture files in this directory

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

You can group your fixtures inside your fixtures directories

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 all of RSpec’s supported mocking frameworks (RSpec, Mocha, RR, Flexmock)

Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Cucumber allows the use of tag Cucumber feature files or individual tests to group tests. Then, you can pass a Cucumber tagged expression at test execution that specifies the tag (grouped) tests to run. https://www.toolsqa.com/cucumber/cucumber-tags/

Other
Other useful information about the testing framework