What are some JavaScript unit testing and mocking frameworks you have used?

QUnit
jqUnit
Writing JavaScript tests with QUnit and jqUnit

QUnit is the unit testing framework for the jQuery JavaScript framework. The testing framework itself uses the jQuery library, but the tests can be written for any JavaScript and do not require the code to use jQuery.

jqUnit is a modified version of QUnit that adds in the setup, teardown, and assert functions that are more typical of an xUnit framework, and encapsulates everything in one global variable.

The visual interface of the testrunner page is nice, allowing you to drill down and see each assert in every test method. Writing tests is fairly easy, and you can run the test code directly on the testRunner page [8]. This allows for easy and visible DOM testing.

QUnit: MIT or GPL (choose) jqUnit: MIT License

Pros

• Asynchronous support
• Good for DOM testing
• Tests always run sequentially in the order they are added to a suite
• Debug on test page using firebug
• Syntax is similar to JUnit if using jqUnit, but simple to learn if using QUnit

Cons

• Automation would be difficult to implement

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned JsTestDriver! It has to be the one of the only JavaScript testing tools that actually work like you'd expect them to if you've used unit testing tools in other languages.

Running tests can be done without touching a browser, you can integrate it with IDE's, and you can integrate it with Continuous integration systems... Oh, and it's fast, and can run tests in multiple browsers at the same time.

You can also use other testing frameworks like YUITest with it, making it even better.

YUI Test
TDD With YUI Test

YUI Test is the test framework for Yahoo’s User Interface (YUI) library. It is used by Yahoo to test its own library, and has syntax similar to JUnit.

Like jsUnit, YUI Test comes with its own logging console that can output information, warnings and errors in addition to the results of each test.

YUI also provides the ability to send reports on the results in either JSON or XML format.

YUI Test is BSD licensed.

Pros

• Really good documentation
• Active community
• Regular releases
• Syntax is similar to JUnit (test suites, asserts and setup/teardown)
• Asynchronous support
• Good for DOM testing
• Tests always run sequentially in the order they are added to a suite

Cons

• Automation not trivial to implement, but less difficult than other frameworks

For mocking in JavaScript, take a look at qMock, a framework a colleague and I wrote to complement our use of QUnit. Although the latter is great for unit tests, it doesn't allow for very effective async/business logic testing. We haven't 'tagged' any release as stable, but there's some decent documentation on there, and if you checkout the SVN repository you'll see qmock itself has unit tests behind it which are fairly self-explanatory.

Oh, and to automate testing as part of the build, we used a simple Selenium script to navigate through our testsuite (one testing page per JavaScript file), and 'listened' for a pass or fail CSS class (added by QUnit). This works headless as well for Internet Explorer and Firefox 2, AFAIK.

I use the Screw Unit test framework and I've written my own mocking library called jsMocha which has been in heavy use in the company I work at for over 6 months.

I know you are asking for jQuery-compatible frameworks, but I want to throw script.aculo.us into the mix for completeness. They have a unit test suite that isn't bad.

CrossCheck seemed extremely powerful when I looked at it, but we've not incorporated it into our build process at this time. It has the advantage of being browserless, and thus should work well in an automated build-and-test scenario.

http://thefrontside.net/crosscheck

JsUnit is run from either the browser, through its Eclipse plug-in, or automatically through an Ant task. You create an HTML page with a bunch of test functions, which must be named with the prefix ‘test’, include the JavaScript file you are testing. When any assert within a function fails, the entire function fails and stops executing. There is no guaranteed order in which these tests are run. You can create setup() and teardown() functions.

License: GPL, GLPL, and MPL

Pros

• Automation is relatively easy to implement
• A lot of functionality
• Syntax is similar to JUnit

Cons

• Not great for DOM testing since it runs tests inside an iFrame.
• No guarantee that tests will be run in the order they are written.
• Can’t use Firebug on the testrunner page. Need to have another tab open with the actual test code.

We've been using jsspec. It's very nice if you like rspec and BDD. I just saw an article by Justin Gehtland on using it "headless" as well.

You could try HtmlUnit which had a jQuery compatible release over a year ago.

The advantage of HtmlUnit is that it isn't driving a browser, so it is fast.

The downside is that it isn't driving a browser so there are some JavaScript things that won't work. But offsetting that they can run the jQuery tests so the JavaScript support might be good enough for what you need.