When comparing Jest vs tape, the Slant community recommends Jest for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript unit testing frameworks?” Jest is ranked 2nd while tape is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Jest is:
One of Jest's philosophies is to provide an integrated “zero-configuration” experience. Eg: it provides assertion library by default.
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Pros
Pro Easy to use
One of Jest's philosophies is to provide an integrated “zero-configuration” experience.
Eg: it provides assertion library by default.
Pro Well documented
Pro Recommended for React testing
Jest is the recommended unit testing framework by Facebook. It's also the one used by Facebook developers when working with React projects.
Pro Snapshot testing is convinient
It's great for testing UI.
It is also convenient for asserting complex data objects, as it doesn't require developers to manually compose the expected value.
Pro Simple API
Very simple API that doesn't require globals, or monkey patching objects for assertions.
Pro Built-in assert
This way you don't have to add more dependencies and external assertion libraries.
Pro No global functions
Tape does not use global methods such as "it", "describe", since they are not considered best practice in JavaScript.
Pro It follows the principles of TAP
TAP: Test Anything Protocol
Cons
Con Not beginner-friendly
If you're new to unit testing and are trying to understand unit testing within the React ecosystem, specifically ReactNative, it is going to be a challenge. The Jest doc dives right into making tests without any primer on how to go from concept to implementation.
Con No concurrency
Cannot run async test cases concurrently for faster test builds.
