When you’re starting out in your career as a web developer, testing is essential. There are ten testing tools that are essential for freelance web developers, and they all have the same goal: to help you find problems and improve your skills. These tools fall into two categories: automated and manual. We will cover both types in the following section.
Browser Stack
Browser Stack is a test environment that you can use to test your website on multiple browsers at the same time. It’s like a virtual computer in your browser, so you can run multiple tests at once and have better results than running separate tests on each computer. A benefit of Browser Stack is that it supports mobile testing as well, so you don’t have to change your mobile device as much when conducting testing.
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs is an open source service used to test websites by simulating user behavior while they interact with websites on different browsers and devices provided.
This helps ensure that only real users are affected to web page change or a browser update, thereby reducing the likelihood of bugs caused by software components such as JavaScript, Flash and cookies.
A benefit of Sauce Labs is that it provides services such as continuous integration, version control and pre-fetching for both local results and remote tracking/reporting features through GitHub or Bitbucket .
Google Test
Google Test is an extension for Google Chrome which allows you to run automated tests from within Google Chrome’s browser extensions interface or from the command line . It’s similar in concept to Browser Stack , with the exception that it doesn’t offer mobile testing tools (such as Sauce). There are many benefits of using Google Test.
It can be configured via an API , integration with Travis CI , automatic deployment through Github hooks , changelog enforcement , detailed error Python, you may want to consider a different tool.
Mocha
Mocha is an open source JavaScript testing framework used to test JavaScript code and software components against expectations. It works within browsers or the command line and can be integrated with other tools (such as Browser stack or Sauce Labs). Mocha provides a rich API using which you can integrate it with other tools, thanks to its Node.js compatibility.
QUnit-JS
QUnit is a library for running functional tests in JavaScript that only requires one file and a browser/device. QUnit test cases are small and easy to understand, making them ideal for client-side testing . Its syntax is similar to that of Selenium Webdriver, so you will find it easy to use
Just define your tests as functions in your code, then throw them at QUnit by calling the qunit() function . QUnit’s benefits include the ability to run tests from multiple browsers in parallel (to simulate real user behavior), integrating with Grunt , support for Python and more.
Jasmine
Jasmine is another open source JavaScript testing tool for testing your JavaScript code against expectations . It works within any browser, on Linux/Mac OS X/Windows and communicates via HTTP requests over port 9876 . There are many benefits of using Jasmine: integration with Karma , support for running tests on multiple browsers simultaneously via Sauce Labs’ TestCloud service , excellent performance , nice syntax, etc., etc., if you’re still unsure whether to use it or not– read this article .
Jest
Jest is a testing framework for JavaScript projects, inspired by similar tools like Mocha , QUnit , and Jasmine . It’s based on Node.js and therefore runs on any platform that supports Node.js (including Windows). Integrates with Grunt (see below) and provides a nice API to define your tests: very easy! One of the best things about Jest is that it automatically runs all your tests in parallel, so you don’t have to set up anything before starting the test suite.
It even takes into account concurrency issues when running your tests, which is very useful when working on multi-core machines or performing CPU-bound tasks: it will rerun failed tests in another thread so that they can be completed in a hurry .
Chai-JS
Chai is an open source testing framework for JavaScript projects; well suited for unit testing . This library aims to provide modern test tools that follow the most current industry standards, such as browser automation and best practices design (like A+ concurrency). Chai works inside any browser or with Node.js , Linux/Mac OS X/Windows environments on a variety of platforms including mobile devices. It also integrates with other tools like Karma (see above) and is written in Coffee Script while keeping its performance high.
There are many benefits of using Chai: great performance , nice syntax as seen above, integration with Karma. If you’re still unsure whether to use it or not– read this article .
Selenium
The official Selenium WebDriver is a set of tools for driving browsers. This library is based on the Java-based WebDriver code, It has been open sourced by Sun Microsystems and is maintained by the Selenium Group at Sauce Labs.
The official Selenium WebDriver is best suited to automate web applications across multiple platforms and browsers, utilizing the same HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XPath standards. Selenium can also be used for desktop testing (without a browser) too if you don’t use any browser inside your script or when you are developing in Node.js .
Protractor
Protractor is a new open source JavaScript framework making it easier to test web and mobile apps with JavaScript. It also provides feature-rich, more testable code. One of the main goals of Protractor is to eliminate boilerplate code from your tests. The framework, like other ones (see above) has an API for customizing your tests and provides a way to extend it called plugins . Protractor is based on the idea that you don’t have to write the same tasks or methods in every file.
Rather that you can write reusable logic for different scenarios and contexts. With Protractor you can automate end-to-end testing with headless browsers .Phantom JS without needing to maintain DOM nodes or references , as well as perform functional testing R spec over more complex JavaScript codebase built with ES6 features like arrow functions and classes.