tj/should.js

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

2734 stars · 184 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

should.js is an expressive, readable, BDD-style assertion library for Node.js and browsers that is test framework agnostic. It extends Object.prototype with a non-enumerable 'should' getter so assertions read like natural language, with helpful error messages.

Use cases

• write bdd style assertions in node.js tests
• assert object properties and array lengths in tests
• use an assertion library with any test framework
• replace the node assert module with readable assertions
• run assertions in the browser

When to choose

• you want expressive, chainable assertions that read like sentences
• you use a test runner without built-in assertions or want framework-agnostic assertions
• you prefer BDD-style should syntax over plain assert

When to avoid

• you need an actively maintained library - the latest release is from 2015 and the repo moved to shouldjs/should.js
• you dislike Object.prototype extension, which can conflict with null-prototype objects and strict environments
• you need IE <= 8 support, which is not supported

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

testing e2e-testing testing developer-tools browser bdd-assertions assertion-library test-framework-agnostic nodejs javascript

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