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RSpec vs Unitils comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between RSpec and Unitils?

RSpec

https://rspec.info

Unitils

http://www.unitils.org/summary.html
Programming language

Ruby

Java

Category

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

Unit Testing, Intergration Testing

General info

Domain Specific Language (DSL) testing solution for Ruby code

It focuses on empowering Test Driven Development (TDD). RSpec contains multiple smaller libraries, which may be independently used with other testing frameworks.

Unitils is an open source library whose goal is to make unit and integration testing easy and maintainable.

Unitils is divided into modules, each of them providing support for a certain aspect of your unit and integration tests. For example if you need mocking for your tests, just include unitils-mock as a dependency, If you would also want to load DbUnit data sets, just include unitils-dbunit
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

Yes

Yes, but it differs from more traiditional xUnit solutions. Its tests are written in a "Tests as Specification" manner. This means that the terminology used in RSpec is adjusted to a language more fitting for specification.

No

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

Yes

RSpec is used to primarily test the behaviour of applications or individual components so it can test front-end behaviour as well - you can use capybara gem with RSpec for that.

Yes

You can perform unit tests on various components and functionality that make up the front-end
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

You can test server-side behaviour with Rspec

Yes

Unitils provides support for testing the back-end through modules such as DbUnit which specifically tests your database, i.e connections setup and so on
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

RSpec does contain fixture methods

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 fixture methods are supported

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

RSpec contains generators for example intergration_'test_name' which will save a spec inside the spec/requests folder

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

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

Available through rspec-mocks gem.

Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Allows declaring example groups and contexts.

Other
Other useful information about the testing framework