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

TwistedTrial

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

unittest

https://docs.Python.org/3/library/unittest.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'

unittest is a unit testing framework for Python

The unittest test framework is Python’s xUnit style framework. It is a standard module that is bundled with Python and supports the automation and aggregation of tests and common setup and shutdown code for them.
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

Yes

unittest is a xUnit style frameworkfor Python, it was previously called PyUnit.
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

Front-end functionality and behaviour can be tested by unittest.
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

Since the webserver funtionalities have their own features and each feature has its own functions, we can write tests with unittest to test each function
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

By use of the 'setUp()' function which is called to prepare the test fixture
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

unittest allows you to group your initialization code into a setUp function and clean up code in a tearDown function
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

unittest contains generator methods in the module 'unittest.TestCase'
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

Yes

Mocks are available from the library unittest.mock which allows you to replace parts of your system under test with mock objects
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages

Yes

One can build suites either manually or use test discovery to build the suite automatically by scanning a directory
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework