5 Best Unit Testing Tools for Angular and ReactJS

“Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it.”

— DeMarco and Lister

Essentially, unit testing methodologies are an indispensable instrument in the toolbox of any software developer and are designed to eliminate the complexity of poorly developed code. Though unit testing allows the assessment of program behavior with a dedicated focus on all areas of testing, it can sometimes pose challenges when it comes to addressing anti-patterns and bad practices.

With the ever-expanding feature list and the codebases growing exponentially, improving unit testability becomes critical in terms of developing close to an ‘ideal’ testing framework. From multiple JavaScript testing frameworks to useful assertion libraries, narrowing down to the right toolset is key to Test-driven development (TDD).

XDuce recommends a blend of robust testing solutions for building low-maintenance and testable code. We have handpicked a few cutting-edge testing tools for Angular and ReactJS that can help navigate the testing landscape and leverage the most code coverage by far:

1. Karma

Karma is one of the most effective JavaScript command-line tools that can be used to spawn web servers. It can not only be configured to run against multiple browsers but can also be used to load your application’s source code and execute a suite of tests on the command line. The power of Karma lies in its unmatched capability to eliminate browser implementation glitches from the code.

2. Jest

With their philosophy of providing an integrated ‘zero-configuration’ experience, Jest is largely used for parallelizing test runs across the board to maximize performance. Jest has the innate ability to generate more stable and healthy code bases and is widely used for all JavaScript code testing purposes including React applications.

3. Mocha

Advocates simplicity and ease of use in a Node.js environment. In fact, Enzyme – a JavaScript Testing utility used with Mocha has proved to one of the best combinations for testing web applications written in ReactJS. You can use the power of Enzyme to assert, manipulate, and traverse the output of your React components.

4. Selenium Webdriver

Selenium Webdriver is a high-end, top-of-the-line testing automation tools for creating end-to-end testing scenarios. The power of Selenium Webdriver lies in its ability to control Web browsers through programs and diversity in terms of its functionality on a range of browsers and operating systems.

5. Jasmine

Largely a behavior-driven development framework for testing JavaScript code, Jasmine works synchronously with Karma. Being the ‘go-to testing framework within the Angular documentation, Jasmine is relatively dependency-free and does not require a Document Object Model (DOM). Jasmine is loaded with a feature called ‘spy’ that allows spying on a function, and attributes, parameters, and arguments can be tracked effectively.

In the continually evolving landscape of automated testing, there never is a perfect fit. However, with the significant paradigm shift in today’s fast-paced development environment, automated testing has displaced comprehensive manual testing. Businesses are now leveraging the value that robust and sophisticated testing toolsets offer in the context of your testing project and end-user expectations.