Regarding data-driven testing, Kotest documents only the `withData` usage, but I've also seen people...

# kotest

[Klitos Kyriacou]

Regarding data-driven testing, Kotest documents only the withData usage, but I've also seen people using forAll , table and row , for example at https://proandroiddev.com/data-driven-testing-with-kotlintest-a07ac60e70fc. Are the latter not recommended, perhaps superseded by withData ? Or is it that forAll etc are too new to be documented but may replace withData in the future?

[wasyl]

In the past I migrated away from forAll due to performance issues caused by reflectively determining parameters names https://github.com/kotest/kotest/blob/3646c5eee03e8807f6e3cd7415bf61ac49182ccd/kotest-assertions/kotest-assertions-shared/src/commonMain/kotlin/io/kotest/data/forAll2.kt#L6-L7

[wasyl]

I see this is solved by Table though? In any case, I don't know about Kotest guidelines, but at $work we just went with a listOf(OurCustomTestCaseDataClass).forEach { describe("description" { } }. It's not a lot more overhead to write, IDE support is faster (less generics compared to Row), and we can clearly name arguments in custom data class.

[Emil Kantis]

I personally prefer withData , but beware the slight but significant inconsistency regarding lifecycle hooks which currently exists (addressed by #3300) between tests created by withData vs a regular test.

I assumed that withData was intended do replace forAll (which clashes naming-wise with the prop.testing function, as well as the collection inspection), but I haven't seen any moves to deprecate forAll so not sure if it's actually planned.