Knapsack Pro

Nose vs Cypress.io comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Nose and Cypress.io?

Nose

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

Cypress.io

https://www.cypress.io/
Programming language

Python

JavaScript

Category

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

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

Cypress users are typically developers or QA engineers building web applications using modern JavaScript frameworks. This is the top tier UI automation framework which outsmarts Selenium based frameworks in most of the aspects!

Cypress enables you to write all types of tests: 1. End-to-end tests; 2. Integration tests; 3. Unit tests; 4. Cypress can test anything that runs in a browser; Apart from that Cypress provides the Dashboard facility for CI/CD
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

This is the primary goal of Cypress, it tests anything that runs in a browser and works to build great user experience that is it tests the applications flow from beginning to end from a user's perspective. It is built to handle modern JavaScript frameworks especially well and also works equally well on older server rendered pages or applications
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

Although Cypress is not a general automation framework, nor is it a unit testing framework for your back-end services, It can test back-end behaviours for example using cy.task() command which provides a way for running Node code, so you can take actions necessary for your tests outside of the scope of Cypress
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

Cypress has inbuilt fixtures capabilities or example using the command 'cy.fixture(filePath)' loads a fixed set of data located in a file
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

Cypress can create group fixtures using the 'cy.fixture' command
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

N/A

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

Yes

Cypress comes built in with the ability to stub and spy with cy.stub(), cy.spy(), It also automatically bundles 'sinon', 'lolex' and 'sinon-chai' which all work to give Cypress mocking capabilities
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

Cypress allows you to configure tests into groups however there is no way currently to run the groups
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework