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

Robot Framework

https://robotframework.org/

Nose

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

Python

Python

Category

Acceptance Testing

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

General info

Robot is a Python framework used for acceptance/functional testing

Robot is an automated test framework which has a simple plain text syntax and can be extended easily with Python or Java libraries. It can run on the .net-based IronPython and on Jython which is Java based.

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.
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

Robot has a rich library and can also be easily integrated with Selenium for browser automation to test front-end components

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

Yes

Robot can be used for back-end tests as well

Yes

Nose can test back-end components and functionality as small units. One can write tests for each function that provides back-end functionality
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

There is no inbuilt way to work with fixtures in Robot however it can integrate with unittest and use fixtures that way

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.
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.

By integrating with unittest

Yes

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

Yes

Robot has a library called the Robot Framework Faker library. It contains 147 keywords used for generating random test data

Through use of third party libraries like test-generator and from the 'unittest.TestCase' library
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

Apache License 2.0

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

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

Robot can access Python's mock library for mocking

Yes

The nose library extends the built-in Python unittest module therefore has access to unittest.mock
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

One can create a test suite with Robot

Yes

With nose it collects tests automatically and there’s no need to manually collect test cases into test suites.
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework