Knapsack Pro

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

TwistedTrial

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

Spek

https://www.spekframework.org/
Programming language

Python

Kotlin

Category

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

Acceptance Testing, 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'

Spek is a specification framework for Kotlin

Spek is a Kotlin-based Specification Testing framework for the JVM. It works as a JUnit 5 Test Engine meaning that we can easily plug it into any project that already uses JUnit 5 to run alongside any other tests that we might have.
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

Yes you can test front-end behaviour by writing specifications to test front-end functionality. Developers can also write unit tests for individual front-end components.
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

You can test back-end behaviour and componets by writing specifications to test back-end functionality and unit tests for individual back-end 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

Fixtures are available in spek through functions suchas beforeEachTest() and afterEachTest()
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

spek has group fixtures available through the beforeGroup() and afterGroup() functions
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

Modified BSD 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

Yes

You can use the third party library mockito-kotlin
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages

Yes

Tests are written using nested lambdas, each scope (level) can either be a group or a test
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework