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

Mocha

https://mochajs.org

Kahlan

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

JavaScript

PHP

Category

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing, End-to-End Testing

Unit Testing

General info

Mocha is a widely used JavaScript test framework for Node.js

Mocha is a simple, flexible and the one of the widely adopted JS test framework. Mocha usually runs tests serially which enables the accurate reporting. Also it's useful for asynchronous testing, and provides various king of test reports. Spec is default test reporter for mocha, there are many test reports like Nyan, Dot matrix, Tap, Landing strip, List and Progress. Mocha is being used with many other test frameworks like Selenium WebDriver, Webdriver.io, wd and Cypress

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
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

Yes

It has an XUnit reporter available which outputs an XUnit-compatible XML document, often applicable in CI servers.

No

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

Yes

Mocha Runs in the browser and is used widely to test front-end components and functionality. It can test various DOM elements, front-end functions and so on.

Yes

Kahlan allows you to test front-end components and behaviour easily
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Mocha provides convenient ways of testing the Node server.It works well with Chai (an assertion library) where it provides the environment for writing server-side tests while we write the tests with Chai

Yes

You can test individual back-end components using Kahlan
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Mocha provides the hooks before(), after(), beforeEach(), and afterEach() to set up preconditions and clean up after your tests

Yes

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

Mocha allows grouping of fixtures

Yes

You can write group fixtures
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

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)

Provides Mocking capabilities through third party libraries like sinon.js, simple-mock and nock

Yes

With Kahlan's stubbing system you are able to set stubs (like mocks) directly to your class methods (dynamic mocking)
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Grouping is supported and is accomplished by the using a nested 'describe()'

Yes

Kahlan allows you to group tests syntactically using a closure syntax. It has describe and context methods for grouping
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework