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Nightwatch.js vs Mocha

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When comparing Nightwatch.js vs Mocha, the Slant community recommends Mocha for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript BDD frameworks?” Mocha is ranked 1st while Nightwatch.js is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Mocha is:

Mocha runs independently from the [assertion library](http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/#assertions), so you can choose which assertion format works best for you. Mocha most often is run in combination with assertion library [Chai](http://chaijs.com).

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What are the best JavaScript BDD frameworks?

Pros

Pro
You don't have to choose a testing framework

Nightwatch solves the Paradox of Choice among testing frameworks such as Jasmine, Cucumber or Mocha+Chai, by including its own BDD-style assertion library, based on Chai.

Pro
Includes its own testing framework / assertions library

Pro
Test organization is out of the box

Supports page object model, custom commands, custom assertions, and globals.js.

Pro
3rd party integration with Cucumber

Though Cucumber is not officially supported, Nightwatch can be used with Cucumber.

Pro
Supports different assertion libraries

Mocha runs independently from the assertion library, so you can choose which assertion format works best for you.

Mocha most often is run in combination with assertion library Chai.

Pro
Write tests with Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

Allows developers to choose their development process. Not only TDD but also BDD.

Pro
Runs in Node.js and the browser

Mocha has a browser build as well as a node command line program so you can test in client and server side environments.

Pro
Makes Asynchronous testing extremely easy

No need to write tricky statements for Async testing. Mocha gives you a done callback. Place this done parameter in your callback function, that'll let Mocha know that you've written an asynchronous function.

Pro
Integrates really well with NodeJS

The Mocha test framework itself runs on NodeJS, hence it makes everything related to it extremely simple. With Mocha's simple syntax and speed, testing your node.js app just got a whole lot easier.

Pro
Custom full color test reporters

Mocha has multiple test reporters built in and you can create your own as well. The test reporters have full color and makes it easy to see if your tests fail or not.

Pro
Easy to add support for Generators

Aside from the numerous benefits with generators in your application, You can now also integrate generators into your test suite. By using mocha, all you have to do is enable support for generators.

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Cons

Con
No official BDD-style syntax support

Con
Includes its own testing framework / assertions library

Unlike WebdriverIO, which lets you use various test frameworks and assertion libraries (e.g. Jasmine, Cucumber, Mocha + Chai), Nightwatch comes with its own BDD-style interface for performing assertions, based on Chai.

Here's a simple test example:

module.exports = {
  'Demo test Google' : function (browser) {
    browser
      .url('http://www.google.com')
      .waitForElementVisible('body', 1000)
      .setValue('input[type=text]', 'nightwatch')
      .waitForElementVisible('button[name=btnG]', 1000)
      .click('button[name=btnG]')
      .pause(1000)
      .assert.containsText('#main', 'Night Watch')
      .end();
  }
};

Con
Can be intimidating for beginners

While some testing frameworks are complete out of the box, Mocha requires developers to select and set up assertion libraries and mocking utilities. For someone who is just starting to learn how to build tests this can be scary as they will also have to choose which libraries to use and learn them too.