Knapsack Pro

Kahlan vs Specter comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Kahlan and Specter?

Kahlan

https://github.com/kahlan/kahlan

Specter

http://specter.sourceforge.net/
Programming language

PHP

.NET

Category

Unit Testing

Acceptance Testing

General info

Kahlan is a full-featured BDD testing framework

It is a full-featured BDD testing framework that embraces the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) design principle. Kahlan makes it possible to write unit tests using the 'describe-it' syntax and requires at least PHP 5.5

Specter is a behaviour-driven development framework for .NET and Mono

Specter enables behavior driven development (BDD) by allowing developers to write executable specifications for their objects, before actually implementing them, this is similar to test driven development however the different nomenclature makes it different from writing 'tests' for code that does not exist yet
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

No

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

Yes

Kahlan allows you to test front-end components and behaviour easily

Yes

Developers can create specfications of the expected front-end behaviours and test them
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

You can test individual back-end components using Kahlan

Yes

Yes developers can create specfications of the expected back-end behaviours and test these.
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

Fixtures can be defined by use of 'setUp()'method and cleaned using the 'tearDown()'method

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.

Yes

You can write group fixtures

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.

N/A

N/A

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

BSD 3-Clause 'New' or 'Revised' 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

With Kahlan's stubbing system you are able to set stubs (like mocks) directly to your class methods (dynamic mocking)

N/A

Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Kahlan allows you to group tests syntactically using a closure syntax. It has describe and context methods for grouping

Yes

You can create your own test suites with specter
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework