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SpecFlow vs Mocha comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between SpecFlow and Mocha?

SpecFlow

https://specflow.org/

Mocha

https://mochajs.org
Programming language

.NET

JavaScript

Category

Acceptance Testing

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

General info

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET which follows the BDD paradigm, and is part of the Cucumber family. SpecFlow tests are written with Gherkin, using the official Gherkin parser which allows you to write test cases using natural languages and supports over 70 languages.

Mocha is a widely used JavaScript test framework for Node.js

Mocha is a simple, flexible and the one of the widely adopted JS test framework. Mocha usually runs tests serially which enables the accurate reporting. Also it's useful for asynchronous testing, and provides various king of test reports. Spec is default test reporter for mocha, there are many test reports like Nyan, Dot matrix, Tap, Landing strip, List and Progress. Mocha is being used with many other test frameworks like Selenium WebDriver, Webdriver.io, wd and Cypress
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

Yes

It has an XUnit reporter available which outputs an XUnit-compatible XML document, often applicable in CI servers.
Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

Front-end behaviour is tested. With specflow specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against this

Yes

Mocha Runs in the browser and is used widely to test front-end components and functionality. It can test various DOM elements, front-end functions and so on.
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Back-end behaviour is tested. Specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against them

Yes

Mocha provides convenient ways of testing the Node server.It works well with Chai (an assertion library) where it provides the environment for writing server-side tests while we write the tests with Chai
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

BeforeTestRun and AfterTestRun are executed once for each thread which is a limitation of the current architecture.

Mocha provides the hooks before(), after(), beforeEach(), and afterEach() to set up preconditions and clean up after your tests
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.

N/A

N/A

Mocha allows grouping of 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.

Yes

SpecFlow contains a generator component. The SpecFlow IDE integration tries to locate the generator component in your project structure, in order to use the generator version matching the SpecFlow runtime in your project

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

BSD 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

Specflow intergrates well with mock to give it excellent mocking capabilities

Provides Mocking capabilities through third party libraries like sinon.js, simple-mock and nock
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

You can create test suites with specflow

Yes

Grouping is supported and is accomplished by the using a nested 'describe()'
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework