Head-to-Head: React Testing Library vs Enzyme (deprecated) Analysis
@testing-library/react
v16.0.0(about 2 months ago)
@testing-library/react is a testing utility library for React applications that encourages best practices for testing user interfaces. It provides a simple and intuitive API for interacting with your components as a user would, focusing on testing behavior rather than implementation details. This approach helps ensure that your tests are more resilient to UI changes and closely mimic how users interact with your application.
Enzyme is a JavaScript testing utility for React that makes it easier to assert, manipulate, and traverse React components' output. It provides a set of intuitive and flexible APIs for testing React components in isolation, allowing you to simulate user interactions, check component state and props, and verify component output.
Alternatives:
@testing-library/react-+
react-test-renderer-+
chai-enzyme-+
sinon-+
jest-enzyme-+
cypress-react-unit-test-+
react-hooks-testing-library-+
majestic-+
react-testing-library-+
@wojtekmaj/enzyme-adapter-react-17-+
Tags: javascripttestingreactcomponentsassertions
Fight!
Popularity
Both @testing-library/react and Enzyme are popular testing libraries for React applications. However, @testing-library/react has gained significant popularity in recent years due to its focus on testing user behavior and promoting best practices, while Enzyme has been around for longer and has a large user base.
Testing Approach
@testing-library/react follows a more user-centric testing approach, where tests are written from the perspective of the user interacting with the application. It encourages testing the application as a black box and focusing on user behavior. Enzyme, on the other hand, provides a more component-centric testing approach, allowing you to directly manipulate and inspect the internal state of components.
API Design
@testing-library/react provides a simple and intuitive API that encourages writing tests that closely resemble how users interact with the application. It promotes using queries to select elements based on their text content, labels, or accessibility attributes. Enzyme, on the other hand, provides a more extensive API with a wide range of utility methods for interacting with and asserting on components.
Component Rendering
@testing-library/react uses JSDOM or a real browser environment (via tools like Puppeteer) to render components, allowing for more realistic testing scenarios. Enzyme, on the other hand, uses a shallow rendering approach by default, which renders only the tested component without its children. It also provides a mount method for full rendering, but it may be slower and less efficient compared to @testing-library/react.
Community Support
Both libraries have active communities and provide good support. However, @testing-library/react has gained more traction and has become the de facto standard for testing React applications. It has a larger community, extensive documentation, and many resources available online. Enzyme, being an older library, still has a strong community but may have slightly fewer resources and updates compared to @testing-library/react.
Integration with Ecosystem
@testing-library/react integrates well with other testing tools and frameworks in the React ecosystem, such as Jest, Cypress, and React Testing Library. It promotes using a combination of these tools for comprehensive testing. Enzyme, on the other hand, can be used with various testing frameworks but has a closer integration with Jest.
