JavaScript is a powerful scripting language on the web that has gained extreme popularity. We all know that Testing is good however the foremost difficulty that people face is when they try to write unit tests for client side code and they understand that they are lacking actual units. JavaScript code is generally written for every web page of any website and as well for all the modules of any web application by mixing it with related HTML and Back end logic.
In worst case scenarios there is a possibility of mixing it with complete HTML as Inline Events Handlers. This generally happens when there is no JavaScript Library for DOM abstraction to be used. It is very much easier to write Event Handlers rather making use of Application Programming Interfaces for binding those events. There are more and more web developers who are making use of the jQuery Library for handling DOM abstraction so that they can move these inline events to various scripts which can be embedded either in separate JavaScript files or in the same web page. Nevertheless you need to understand the fact that putting the code in different files does not actually imply that it is ready to be tested as a unit.
Here is a list of JavaScript Unit Testing Frameworks that you can use for smooth unit test results :
JSUnit
A simple and easy to use JavaScript Unit Testing Framework that will allow you to write repeated unit tests in JavaScript. This framework is an instance of the Xunit Architecture for unit testing frameworks.
Pros of JSUnit
1) It has an active mailing list.
2) You can invoke this from any Ant Build File
3) It supports Eclipse Plug-in
4) Last but not the least it will launch the Web browser for running the Unit Tests.
1) It requires frequent modifications to the source repository which are not being made often.
2) You need to embed it inside the HTML file as there is no external support for JS file to write the unit test code.
Rhino Unit JavaScript Unit Testing Framework
This framework is run from an ANT scripted task with the use of Rhino engine and is designed in such a way that in future it can be reused for various forms. This framework is capable of doing all kinds of normal unit tests such as Regular Expression Comparison , String and Object Comparisons , Collection Comparisons. The best thing about Rhino Unit is that it does all these tests in a natural form. Apart from providing support for normal tests this will as well help you perform various other advanced tests such as ensuring that the global namespace in the code is not polluted by poor variable scoping or making sure that the function has been called or making sure that exceptions are thrown when required and lots more.
Pros of Rhino Unit
1) It is a simple and easy to use unit testing framework.
2) It is ant driven and has support for JS files.
Cons of Rhino Unit
The simulation of the JavaScript Engine in case of Rhino Unit is not so advanced to support the code.
QUnit
This framework is an easy to use and powerful unit testing platform that is used by most of the jQuery Mobile Projects, jQuery and jQuery UI and has the functionality of testing all kinds of JavaScript Code.
Tutti Framework
This JavaScript unit testing framework works by the concept that when you enter any Javascript Command that will be instantly sent to the web browser that is connected to the room and then the browser will evaluate it with the help of eval () function within an iframe sandbox and send the result of the unit test to be displayed.
Mocha
This is a feature rich JavaScript Unit Testing Framework which runs on the web browser and the node that makes asynchronous testing fun and easy. You can be assured of flexible and accurate reporting with Mocha as it will run all the Unit tests serially thus mapping all the uncaught exceptions to just the right set of unit test cases.
CasperJS
This is an open source testing and navigation utility based on Phantom JS the scriptable headless Webkit engine and written in JavaScript. This framework is capable of providing various high level methods and functions , syntactic procedure for carrying out the regular common tests which will ease the process of defining a full set of navigation scenarios.
Jasmine Introduction.js
This is a behavior driven JavaScript unit testing framework and does not depend on any of the other Unit Testing Frameworks nor does require a DOM. With an obvious and clean syntax you can easily write unit tests with Jasmine.