Knapsack Pro

TwistedTrial vs Doctest comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between TwistedTrial and Doctest?

TwistedTrial

https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedTrial

Doctest

https://docs.Python.org/2/library/doctest.html
Programming language

Python

Python

Category

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

Unit Testing

General info

Trial is a unit testing framework for Python built by Twisted Matrix labs

Trial is composed of two parts: First is a command-line test runner, which can be run on plain Python unit tests and can do automated unit-test discovery across files, modules, or even arbitrarily nested packages. Second is a test library, derived from Python's 'unittest.TestCase'

Doctest is an inbuilt test framework for Python

Doctest is a test framework that comes prepackaged with Python. It is a simple library with a functionality that makes it possible to search for pieces of text that look like interactive Python sessions and executes these sessions to see if they work exactly as shown.
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

Front-end components can be tested for example adding a web front-end using simple twisted.web.resource.Resource objects

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

Yes

Server-side behaviour can be tested with Trial, it has various functions for this in the twisted.web.Resource package

Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

Trial supports various fixture methods such as 'setUp()' and 'tearDown' functions fixture for normal semantics of setup, and teardown

No

Lacks fixture management which can make writing tests harder
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

Methods like 'setUp()' allow for creation of group fixtures

No

Lacks fixture management
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.

N/A

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT 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

Trial can access the mock library inbuilt in python for mocking purposes

A good external library for using Mocks with Doctest is minimocks
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages

Yes

One can group tests
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework