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

Nose

https://nose.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Behat

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

Python

PHP

Category

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

Functional/Acceptance Testing

General info

Nose is a Python unit test framework

This is a Python unit test framework that intergrates well with doctests, unnittests, and 'no-boilerplate tests', that is tests written from scratch without a specific boilerplate.

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
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

nose is a unit testing tool which is very similar to unittest. It is basically unittest with extensions therefore just like unittest is can test front-end components and behaviour

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

Yes

Nose can test back-end components and functionality as small units. One can write tests for each function that provides back-end functionality

Yes

Behat can be used for Data Integrity Testing to verify that database operations are functioning properly
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

nose supports fixtures at the package, module, class, and test case levels, so that initialization which can be expensive is done as infrequently as possible.

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.
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

Group fixtures are allowed with nose, where a multitest state can be defined.

Yes

Behat allows for 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.

Through use of third party libraries like test-generator and from the 'unittest.TestCase' library

By use of third party libraries like moodle-behat-generators
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL) (GNU LGPL)

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

The nose library extends the built-in Python unittest module therefore has access to unittest.mock

By using third party libraries like Mock and Prophecy
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

With nose it collects tests automatically and there’s no need to manually collect test cases into test suites.

Yes

You can use tags to group features and scenarios together, independent of your file and directory structure
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework