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

PHPUnit

https://phpunit.de/

Cypress.io

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

PHP

JavaScript

Category

Unit Testing

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

General info

PHPUnit is a unit testing framework for the PHP programming language

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework and is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

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.

Yes

It's an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks

No

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

Yes

It can perform Unit tests and can test various front-end components and behaviours

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

By performing unit tests on singular back-end components

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

By use of a setup code. The setup code consists of two Important template functions, the 'setUp()' function (called to create the objects to be tested) and 'tearDown()' function (called to cleanup the objects which you tested)

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

It does support group fixtures

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.

N/A

N/A

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported 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)

Yes

One of its main features is that PHPUnit comes with out of the box support for Mock objects

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

It allows grouping of tests and by using the @group annotation one can tag a test to belong to one or more groups

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