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Vows vs Kahlan comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between Vows and Kahlan?

Vows

http://vowsjs.org/

Kahlan

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

JavaScript

PHP

Category

Functional Testing, Asynchronous Testing

Unit Testing

General info

Vows is a testing framework for NodeJS applications.

Vows supports Asynchronous BDD & continuous testing for two reasons first, reason is that node.js is asynchronous, and therefore our tests need to be, second,is to make test suites which target I/O libraries run much faster.

Kahlan is a full-featured BDD testing framework

It is a full-featured BDD testing framework that embraces the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) design principle. Kahlan makes it possible to write unit tests using the 'describe-it' syntax and requires at least PHP 5.5
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

No

Yes

Kahlan allows you to test front-end components and behaviour easily
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Since it specifically tests Nodejs it tests back-end components and other server-side behaviours and functions

Yes

You can test individual back-end components using Kahlan
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

No

Yes

Fixtures can be defined by use of 'setUp()'method and cleaned using the 'tearDown()'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.

No

Yes

You can write group 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.

N/A

Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

Apache License 2.0

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

With Kahlan's stubbing system you are able to set stubs (like mocks) directly to your class methods (dynamic mocking)
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Kahlan allows you to group tests syntactically using a closure syntax. It has describe and context methods for grouping
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework