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

TwistedTrial

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

SimpleTest

https://github.com/simpletest/simpletest
Programming language

Python

PHP

Category

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

Unit Testing, Web 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'

SimpleTest is a unit test and web test framework for PHP

It has JWebUnit style functionality and support for SSL, forms, frames, proxies and basic authentication
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

Yes

With SimpleTest common but fiddly PHP tasks, such as logging into a site, can be tested easily
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

Yes

Server-side behaviour can be tested by writing simple unit tests to test functionality and behaviour of single components.
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

Yes

It can import fixtures using a mixin like 'given()' method
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

Yes

It 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.

Through use of third party libraries like test-generator.

Yes

Simpletest has support for generators
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

MIT License

GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1

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

Yes

It allows for one to build Mock objects.To create a mock version of a class we need to include the mock object library and run the generator. This will create a clone class which we use to create new instances(objects) in our test cases.
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages

Yes

There are several ways of grouping tests; one is to simply place multiple test cases into a single file, another is to mark any base test cases that should not be run as abstract, Simpletest gives you a couple of options
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework