Knapsack Pro

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

XCTest

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xctest

TwistedTrial

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

Swift

Python

Category

Unit Testing, Performance Testing

Unit Testing, unittest Extensions

General info

XCTest is the default testing framework for unit tests, performance tests, and some level of UI tests for iOS apps.

XCTest framework is a testing framework that enables developers write basic unit tests, performance tests, and some level of UI tests for iOS apps.

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'
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

Yes

Yes, it is an xUnit style framework

No

Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

Developers can test individual front-end components with XCTest

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

Yes, developers can test individual back-end components with XCTest

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

XCTest contains setup() and teardown() fixture methods for setting up and destroying test environments

Yes

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

Group fixtures are available in XCTest

Yes

Methods like 'setUp()' allow for creation of 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

Through use of third party libraries like test-generator.
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

You can create protocol mocks and class mocks with libraries such as MockFive or Cuckoo

Yes

Trial can access the mock library inbuilt in python for mocking purposes
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

Developers can define test suites from the XCTestSuite class

Yes

Trial allows tests to be grouped into test packages
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework