Top JavaScript Automation Testing Frameworks In 2019

Rated as number #1 JavaScript automation testing framework for 2018 by the stateofjs survey. Jest was developed by Facebook and used to test JavaScript codes, especially applications developed using React JS.

What Makes Jest A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
1. The biggest benefit of using Jest is the out of the box experience of minimal configuration and setup since it comes with a mocking support an assertion library. Just like any new testing libraries, the test cases are written using the behavior-driven development approach. You can put your test cases in a folder named tests and start running them.
2. Jest is considered a very well documented, a fast performing JavaScript testing framework.
3. Jest offers a robust developer tooling with less error-prone code.
4. The framework can also perform visual regression tests by capturing screenshots. When an application is developed using React JS, this feature comes quite handy for preventing UI bugs caused accidentally. It works by recording a screenshot of the rendered component and later comparing it with components rendered in the future. The screenshots can be updated easily if any new feature is added.

Mocha is a JavaScript-based automated test framework meant for testing applications that run using Node.js. Mocha is rated as #2 JavaScript automation testing framework for stateofjs survey of 2018.

What Makes Mocha A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
Developers as well as testers like Mocha for many reasons.
1. The application is open source and allows flexibility.
2. It can easily support generators.
3. Since it is old, lots of tutorial and documents are available online.
4. Sequential execution of test cases with flexible reporting.
5. Mocha helps you to easily map exceptions with the relevant test cases.

Jasmine, mostly used for asynchronous testing is a feature-rich JavaScript automation testing framework for JavaScript. The application runs on Node.js and allows accurate and flexible bug reporting by serially running the test cases. Jasmine is ranked on #3 for JavaScript testing framework according to stateofjs 2018.

What Makes Jasmine A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
1. The biggest strength of Jasmine is its compatibility across every framework or libraries of your choice, making it one of the most flexible JavaScript testing frameworks. Whether you want to use Sinon for mocking or Chai for asserting test cases, Jasmine will help you without any difficulties.
2. The community of Jasmine is quite large and you will get all kinds of support which come in the form of libraries, blog posts or video tutorials.
3. With a bigger community, the learning curve is very smooth for Jasmine. You get pretty impressive documentation too.
4. Offers an elegant programming style & patterns.

For automated web application testing, especially apps which are developed using Node.js, Nightwatch is a powerful automated framework that uses Selenium WebDriver API and allows the user to perform end to end testing. The primary objective of Nightwatch is to simplify the process of writing automated test cases and helping to set up continuous integration in your development cycle.

What Makes Nightwatch A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
1. First of all, the setup is quite easy.
2. You will only need to import the Selenium library.
3. The community is quite large and there is a lot of resources available in the form of blogs and tutorials if you need any help regarding setup or writing the test cases.
4. The language is very simple. You will only need a basic knowledge of object-oriented programming.
5. If the tester belongs to a Java team, the backend team members can pick up the knowledge easily and help testers to write automated test cases, thereby increasing the overall productivity of your team.

We have got Jest for automated testing of React JS applications. But what about Angular developers. Being one of the oldest and popular frameworks for developing single-page applications, its good to have a framework dedicated to testing Angular JS and Angular applications. Protractor is here to the rescue. It is an end to end automation testing framework dedicated for testing your angular application in a real browser, making automated interaction just like a real user.

What Makes Protractor A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
1. Since the framework runs over Selenium WebDriver it makes cross-browser testing easier. All the basic functionalities of WebDriver is supported by Protractor.
2. Compared to Selenium WebDriver, you will have additional locators like repeater, model, binding and many more.
3. You can easily write and manage page objects.
4. There is a default waits functionality, the purpose of which is to wait for angular which is absent in WebDriver.
5. If your application is developed using a behavior driven approach, this framework is perfect since it supports frameworks like Cucumber, Jasmine, Mocha, etc.
6. Automated screenshot capturing and comparing is much easier in Protractor.
7. The framework also supports parallel execution of test cases across multiple workstations.

Speaking about JavaScript automation testing frameworks, Selenium WebDriver is certainly the most widely accepted, and loved automation testing framework for web-applications. You can use Selenium for performing automated cross browser testing in a thorough manner. And the fact that it is open-source makes Selenium WebDriver one of the top JavaScript automation testing frameworks in the industry. Not only can you use Selenium to perform automation testing with JavaScript, but you can also use it for other programming languages too.

What Makes Selenium A Popular JavaScript Automation Testing Framework?
1. The IDE is open source, hence can be easily learned by testers who are new in the industry or someone who wants to get introduced to the domain of web testing.
2. Being in the industry for a long time, the community of Selenium is quite huge and for any help or query, the community is always there to resolve your problem.
3. Although it has its own language, it offers language bindings to support coding in Java, JavaScript, PHP, etc.

Puppeteer is another Node.js based automated testing library which provides an API that helps the users to control Chrome by overriding the standard DevTools protocol. Many scenarios which can be done manually in the browser can be automated with the help of Puppeteer.

What Makes Puppeteer So Popular?
Automation scripts written using Puppeteer overrides the DevTools Protocol API. Instead of crafting web sockets payloads, calling an API will automatically
1. Launch chrome
2. Open a new tab in the browser
3. Navigate to the desired site for testing.
4. Capture a screenshot and close the browser.

Puppeteer allows the users to mock resources, thereby avoiding reliability, consistency and speed issues. You can manipulate external resources like CSS selectors to make your specific test case execute faster.

Karma was developed to bring a testing environment to developers. An environment where they have to worry less about configuration. They can only write code and get feedback instantly from the test cases.

What Makes Karma So Popular?
1. Karma helps you to easily perform automation testing on real devices and browsers. You can run the test cases on tablets, phones or event on a PhantomJS like headless instance.
2. You can control the entire workflow directly from your IDE or CMD. You only need to save a file and the framework will run the test cases for you.
3. You can run the test cases with Mocha, Jasmin, QUnit or an adapter of your choice.
4. Since the application is open source, you will find a lot of help from the community.
5. It also supports continuous integration using Jenkins, Semaphore or Travis.