What Is Mocha?
What Is Mocha?
“A five-minute coffee break is all that I need, while the testing tool does its job on its own.” Mocha is a flexible, adaptable and function-rich open-source test framework, used for JavaScript test applications, running on Node.js. It comes with a wide range of features that help to test synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript concepts in the browser. Before deploying into production, JS code can be extensively tested in depth using Mocha.
Mocha is extremely popular and very well maintained. It has over 21k stars on Github at the time of writing and has been around for over a decade. Its documentation is well written and easy to follow.
Testing With Mocha
Writing comprehensive tests with Mocha helps to check the more complex features of a program and its functionality. The flexibility in the way Mocha tests can be written and their tight integration with JavaScript and promises etc., helps ensure that even as an application evolves over time, the tests should continue to be able to match all the requirements correctly. Though Node.JS has a large variety of testing frameworks to choose from, Mocha is generally viewed as one of the best automation testing tools available in the market.
If you are looking for an easy to learn and quick to understand automated testing tool then Mocha is the tool.
Benefits of Mocha
- Flexible open-source automation tool
- Mocha does not come with mocking framework and assertion library. To put this in easier terms, you can select any library or framework while testing using Mocha
- A lot of tools have been built around Mocha, and hence it is an adaptive testing framework.
- One other important reason why Mocha is used extensively is that it has a highly active community setup
- Great support is available through blog posts, videos, podcasts, and libraries
- This testing Framework has a number of installation options
- Mocha supports both Test-Driven Development, known as TDD and BDD abbreviated as Behavior Driven Development
- Node.JS applications commonly require asynchronous code. In comparison to other JavaScript testing frameworks, Mocha makes it easier to test asynchronous codes
- Not only is Mocha compatible with most web browsers, but it also allows developers to run tests for different browser-specific methods and options
To Summarise
Every software developer wants their software application to run error-free. The expectation is that code works properly no matter how many changes are made. Ultimately, for a SAAS or Hybrid platform a good JavaScript testing framework is required. A testing tool should allow an end-to-end test. It should have strong community support. These attributes along with many powerful plugins mean Mocha is preferred by many developers. it is an easy to use, open-source testing framework, and with excellent support.
What is Protractor?
Most importantly Protractor has been abandoned by its maintainers and is end of life Summer 2023. Given its 8.8k stars on Github and its heavy usage by certain parts of the Angular community, it is still worth understanding. Protractor is an opensource end to end testing automation tool built by Google, for Angular and AngularJS applications. Although it might be expected that the tool can only be used for Angular applications, it can also be used for non-Angular applications. The testing is automated on an actual browser.
What Is Puppeteer?
Puppeteer was originally created by the Chrome/Google development team, Puppeteer automates Chromium based browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave and even Firefox). It runs in both headless and interactive mode. Headless being the default, it runs the browser emulation without needing to render it to screen.
With a massive 79.8k stars at the time of writing, this is one of the most popular libraries on Github, and is used by many organisations for many purposes ranging from test, to gathering information for several purposes. Adappt used this in 2020 to gather Covid stats from each govt for the World Health Organization.
The real power of Puppeteer is that it will faithfully render pages in the same way as Chrome / Edge, using the very latest release of the Chromium engine and all whilst running in headless mode. This makes it perfect for integration into CI/CD pipelines running on servers without GPUs
Puppeteer can be used for automated browser testing. It is fast and robust and has a ‘clean syntax’ that allows the user to write readable tests.
What Is Selenium?
Selenium is now one of the most popular free (open source) automation tools and automates the browser to perform the many actions that would have previously been done manually. As mentioned, it records; has playback, and highlights errors while testing web apps. It can run multiple scripts across several browsers.
Selenium Test Scripts / Testing can be written in multiple coding/ programming languages, such as C#, Ruby, Scala, Perl, Python, Java, JavaScript, Groovy and more.
It supports various operating systems and works across various browsers (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, IE, Edge, Safari, Opera) and devices.
It is easy to install and provides constant updates. It has multiple simple and easy navigation tools to assist writing test cases without requiring scripts.
