Using vitest for testing server-side Node.js applications

[i9or]

Hi everyone,

I have started evaluating vitest for my company's React.js codebases. And really love it so far! However, we also have quite a few Node.js applications. And having to support two test runners (Jest for servers apps) is not ideal. I tried to search for any examples of using vitest on the internet. Found a few, which is fine knowing that vitest is not yet very popular. I see that configuration is a bit different, as server apps do not use vite. So, my question is, are there any recommendations for or against using vitest for testing server apps? Or I will soon find some limitations? As clearly vitest is meant to be used in conjunction with vite. Thanks in advance for the answer.

[sheremet-va]

Vite is used to transform files, just like jest uses babel to transform files. So I wouldn't say that it meant to be used with Vite applications.

By default Vitest doesn't come with jsdom, and tries to be lightweight. I've seen people use Vitest to test their server applications, so I don't see what can stop you from doing so.

Technically, you should be able to run your jest tests with Vitest just by installing Vitest and runnin vitest command, since their API is largely the same, and all the differences are described in Migration Guide.

[i9or]

Thanks a lot for such a quick answer!

[Alino]

I have migrated our server side nodejs micro-service API from jest to vitest and it's working fine and blazingly fast :) feels better than jest.