What is Selenium and what are its top alternatives?
Selenium is a popular open-source automation testing tool used for web application testing. It allows users to write test scripts in various programming languages like Java, Python, and C#, and supports multiple browsers. Key features of Selenium include cross-browser testing, parallel test execution, and integration with various tools like TestNG and JUnit. However, Selenium has limitations such as the need for strong programming skills, slow execution, and lack of comprehensive reporting.
- Katalon Studio: Katalon Studio is an all-in-one automation testing tool that offers a comprehensive solution for web, API, mobile, and desktop testing. Key features of Katalon Studio include a built-in recorder, scriptless automation, and seamless integration with Jira and Git. Pros of Katalon Studio include easy test creation and management, while cons include limited support for mobile testing.
- TestComplete: TestComplete is a commercial automation tool that supports web, desktop, and mobile application testing. Key features of TestComplete include keyword-driven testing, script customization, and test data management. Pros of TestComplete include a user-friendly interface and detailed test reports, while cons include high cost for enterprise use.
- Cypress: Cypress is an open-source end-to-end testing tool specifically designed for modern web applications. Key features of Cypress include real-time reloads, automatic waiting, and network traffic control. Pros of Cypress include fast test execution and robust test debugging capabilities, while cons include limited browser support.
- Robot Framework: Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework for acceptance testing and robotic process automation. Key features of Robot Framework include keyword-driven testing, easy-to-read syntax, and support for Selenium and Appium. Pros of Robot Framework include extensibility and flexibility, while cons include a steep learning curve for beginners.
- Watir: Watir is an open-source Ruby library for automating web browsers. Key features of Watir include a simple and readable syntax, multi-browser support, and integration with BDD tools. Pros of Watir include ease of use for Ruby developers, while cons include limited support for non-Ruby environments.
- Playwright: Playwright is an open-source automation tool from Microsoft that supports cross-browser testing for web applications. Key features of Playwright include automated waiting, device emulation, and robust API for testing. Pros of Playwright include fast test execution and reliable automation for complex scenarios, while cons include limited documentation and community support.
- TestProject: TestProject is a free automation testing platform that offers a codeless automation solution for web, mobile, and API testing. Key features of TestProject include built-in test recorder, test maintenance AI, and community-driven test scripts. Pros of TestProject include easy setup and collaboration with team members, while cons include limited support for non-standard technologies.
- UFT (Unified Functional Testing): UFT is a commercial automation tool from Micro Focus that supports web, mobile, and API testing. Key features of UFT include keyword-driven testing, object identification, and integration with ALM tools. Pros of UFT include comprehensive testing capabilities and robust support for enterprise environments, while cons include high licensing costs.
- Protractor: Protractor is an end-to-end testing framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Key features of Protractor include easy setup for Angular projects, built-in test reporting, and support for Selenium WebDriver. Pros of Protractor include seamless integration with Angular applications, while cons include limited support for non-Angular applications.
- Appium: Appium is an open-source automation tool for mobile applications that supports native, hybrid, and mobile web apps on iOS and Android platforms. Key features of Appium include cross-platform testing, framework flexibility, and integration with popular testing frameworks. Pros of Appium include a wide range of language bindings available, while cons include complex setup and configuration for some applications.
Top Alternatives to Selenium
- Protractor
Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would. ...
- Cypress
Cypress is a front end automated testing application created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website. ...
- Nightwatchjs
Nightwatch.js is an easy to use Node.js based End-to-End (E2E) testing solution for browser based apps and websites. It uses the powerful Selenium WebDriver API to perform commands and assertions on DOM elements. ...
- Puppeteer
Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol. It can also be configured to use full (non-headless) Chrome. ...
- Cucumber
Cucumber is a tool that supports Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) - a software development process that aims to enhance software quality and reduce maintenance costs. ...
- PhantomJS
PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with JavaScript. It is used by hundreds of developers and dozens of organizations for web-related development workflow. ...
- Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best. ...
- TestCafe
It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports. ...
Selenium alternatives & related posts
- Easy setup9
- Quick tests implementation8
- Flexible6
- Open source5
- Promise support5
- Limited4
related Protractor posts
Currently, we are using Protractor in our project. Since Protractor isn't updated anymore, we are looking for a new tool. The strongest suggestions are WebdriverIO or Puppeteer. Please help me figure out what tool would make the transition fastest and easiest. Please note that Protractor uses its own locator system, and we want the switch to be as simple as possible. Thank you!
Protractor or Cypress for ionic-angular?
We have a huge ionic-angular app with almost 100 pages and 10+ injectables. There are no tests written yet. Before we start, we need some suggestions about the framework. Would you suggest Cypress or Angular's Protractor with Jasmine / Karma for a heavy ionic app with Angular?
Cypress
- Open source29
- Great documentation22
- Simple usage20
- Fast18
- Cross Browser testing10
- Easy us with CI9
- Npm install cypress only5
- Good for beginner automation engineers2
- Cypress is weak at cross-browser testing21
- Switch tabs : Cypress can'nt support14
- No iFrame support12
- No page object support9
- No multiple domain support9
- No file upload support8
- No support for multiple tab control8
- No xPath support8
- No support for Safari7
- Cypress doesn't support native app7
- Re-run failed tests retries not supported yet7
- No support for multiple browser control7
- $20/user/thread for reports5
- Adobe4
- Using a non-standard automation protocol4
- Not freeware4
- No 'WD wire protocol' support3
related Cypress posts
When you think about test automation, it’s crucial to make it everyone’s responsibility (not just QA Engineers'). We started with Selenium and Java, but with our platform revolving around Ruby, Elixir and JavaScript, QA Engineers were left alone to automate tests. Cypress was the answer, as we could switch to JS and simply involve more people from day one. There's a downside too, as it meant testing on Chrome only, but that was "good enough" for us + if really needed we can always cover some specific cases in a different way.
We are in the process of adopting Next.js as our React framework and using Storybook to help build our React components in isolation. This new part of our frontend is written in TypeScript, and we use Emotion for CSS/styling. For delivering data, we use GraphQL and Apollo. Jest, Percy, and Cypress are used for testing.
Nightwatchjs
- Open source3
- Testing2
- Automates browsers2
- Better cross browser (use selenium)1
- Cross-Browser Testing1
- Multiple Browser Support1
- Parallel Test Running1
- No automatic wait2
- Less flexibility1
- Limited native mobile app support1
- Limited browser support1
- Configuration complexity1
related Nightwatchjs posts
For our digital QA organization to support a complex hybrid monolith/microservice architecture, our team took on the lofty goal of building out a commonized UI test automation framework. One of the primary requisites included a technical minimalist threshold such that an engineer or analyst with fundamental knowledge of JavaScript could automate their tests with greater ease. Just to list a few: - Nightwatchjs - Selenium - Cucumber - GitHub - Go.CD - Docker - ExpressJS - React - PostgreSQL
With this structure, we're able to combine the automation efforts of each team member into a centralized repository while also providing new relevant metrics to business owners.
For our internal team and collaboration panel we use Nuxt.js (with TypeScript that is transpiled into ES6), Webpack and npm. We enjoy the opinionated nature of Nuxt.js over vanilla Vue.js, as we would end up using all of the components Nuxt.js incorporates anyways and we can adhere to the conventions setup by the Nuxt.js project, which allows us to get better support in case we run into any dead ends. Webpack allows us to create reproducable builds and also debug our application with hot reloads, which greately increased the pace at which we are able to perform and test changes. We also incorporated a lot of testing (ESLint, Chai, Jasmine, Nightwatchjs) into our pipelines and can trigger those jobs through GitLab CI. All packages are fetched through npm, so that we can keep our git repositories slim and are notified of new updates aswell as reported security flaws.
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
- Chrome only10
related Puppeteer posts
Currently, we are using Protractor in our project. Since Protractor isn't updated anymore, we are looking for a new tool. The strongest suggestions are WebdriverIO or Puppeteer. Please help me figure out what tool would make the transition fastest and easiest. Please note that Protractor uses its own locator system, and we want the switch to be as simple as possible. Thank you!
We chose Pug because writing raw HTML is about as enjoyable as a fart in a spacesuit, and writing decently-rendering HTML for enterprise email clients is a soul-sucking type of black magic.
Pug takes HTML as a (...markdown) language out of the stack by using a simple, sane syntax to represent HTML in just JavaScript©. Piecing together what you need from any number of standalone - including functional - components is both delightfully easy, and easy to maintain.
All you're really writing are exportable JavaScript functions that take a single Object
parameter - once that concept takes hold, you'll quickly swear off angle brackets in favor of neatly indented and extensible e-mail, invoice, and reporting templates.
There's a jstransformer
filter for instant interop with just about every preprocessor ( Stylus , in our case) and file format out there. Pass that compiled HTML though Juice on Node.js and bam - rugged HTML-emails that hold up in even the wonkiest Lotus Notes clients.
That the end result is 'just HTML' is the final cherry on top. Debugging needs only DevTools, and Puppeteer 's now all you need to create fancy-pants PDFs to your heart's content.
- Simple Syntax20
- Simple usage8
- Huge community5
- Nice report3
related Cucumber posts
For our digital QA organization to support a complex hybrid monolith/microservice architecture, our team took on the lofty goal of building out a commonized UI test automation framework. One of the primary requisites included a technical minimalist threshold such that an engineer or analyst with fundamental knowledge of JavaScript could automate their tests with greater ease. Just to list a few: - Nightwatchjs - Selenium - Cucumber - GitHub - Go.CD - Docker - ExpressJS - React - PostgreSQL
With this structure, we're able to combine the automation efforts of each team member into a centralized repository while also providing new relevant metrics to business owners.
I am a QA heading to a new company where they all generally use Visual Studio Code, my experience is with IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm. The language they use is JavaScript and so I will be writing my test framework in javaScript so the devs can more easily write tests without context switching.
My 2 questions: Does VS Code have Cucumber Plugins allowing me to write behave tests? And more importantly, does VS Code have the same refactoring tools that IntelliJ IDEA has? I love that I have easy access to a range of tools that allow me to refactor and simplify my code, making code writing really easy.
- Scriptable web browser13
- Depends on QT3
- No ECMAScript 62
related PhantomJS posts
We use CasperJS because we adopted it back in 2013 for JavaScript frontend testing. It was a really nice system back then compared to what else was out there; you had PhantomJS as a programmable browser that actually rendered CSS and everything, it was really fast (speed is a big downside of e.g. Selenium), and it was possible to make non-flaky frontend integration tests with it.
I wouldn't recommend it today, because PhantomJS is a basically dead project, and as a result, so is CasperJS. I expect we'll migrate to something else. We haven't in large part because 95% of our new tests are written with a simple Node.js-based unit testing framework we use that run 35K lines of unit tests covering most of our JS codebase in 3.6 seconds. And for the things where we want an integration test, CasperJS does work, and I think there's a good chance that waiting another year or two will result in our being able to switch to a much better option than what we'd get if we migrated now.
Python
- Great libraries1.2K
- Readable code961
- Beautiful code847
- Rapid development787
- Large community689
- Open source437
- Elegant393
- Great community282
- Object oriented272
- Dynamic typing220
- Great standard library77
- Very fast60
- Functional programming55
- Easy to learn49
- Scientific computing45
- Great documentation35
- Productivity29
- Matlab alternative28
- Easy to read28
- Simple is better than complex24
- It's the way I think20
- Imperative19
- Free18
- Very programmer and non-programmer friendly18
- Machine learning support17
- Powerfull language17
- Fast and simple16
- Scripting14
- Explicit is better than implicit12
- Ease of development11
- Clear and easy and powerfull10
- Unlimited power9
- It's lean and fun to code8
- Import antigravity8
- Print "life is short, use python"7
- Python has great libraries for data processing7
- Great for tooling6
- Rapid Prototyping6
- Readability counts6
- Fast coding and good for competitions6
- There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious6
- High Documented language6
- I love snakes6
- Although practicality beats purity6
- Flat is better than nested6
- Now is better than never6
- Great for analytics5
- Lists, tuples, dictionaries5
- Easy to learn and use4
- Web scraping4
- Simple and easy to learn4
- Easy to setup and run smooth4
- Plotting4
- Beautiful is better than ugly4
- Multiple Inheritence4
- Complex is better than complicated4
- Socially engaged community4
- CG industry needs4
- Flexible and easy3
- Many types of collections3
- If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a g3
- If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad id3
- Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules3
- Pip install everything3
- List comprehensions3
- No cruft3
- Generators3
- Import this3
- It is Very easy , simple and will you be love programmi3
- Can understand easily who are new to programming2
- Powerful language for AI2
- Should START with this but not STICK with This2
- A-to-Z2
- Because of Netflix2
- Only one way to do it2
- Better outcome2
- Good for hacking2
- Securit2
- Batteries included2
- Automation friendly1
- Sexy af1
- Slow1
- Procedural programming1
- Ni0
- Powerful0
- Keep it simple0
- Still divided between python 2 and python 353
- Performance impact28
- Poor syntax for anonymous functions26
- GIL22
- Package management is a mess19
- Too imperative-oriented14
- Hard to understand12
- Dynamic typing12
- Very slow12
- Indentations matter a lot8
- Not everything is expression8
- Incredibly slow7
- Explicit self parameter in methods7
- Requires C functions for dynamic modules6
- Poor DSL capabilities6
- No anonymous functions6
- Fake object-oriented programming5
- Threading5
- The "lisp style" whitespaces5
- Official documentation is unclear.5
- Hard to obfuscate5
- Circular import5
- Lack of Syntax Sugar leads to "the pyramid of doom"4
- The benevolent-dictator-for-life quit4
- Not suitable for autocomplete4
- Meta classes2
- Training wheels (forced indentation)1
related Python posts
How Uber developed the open source, end-to-end distributed tracing Jaeger , now a CNCF project:
Distributed tracing is quickly becoming a must-have component in the tools that organizations use to monitor their complex, microservice-based architectures. At Uber, our open source distributed tracing system Jaeger saw large-scale internal adoption throughout 2016, integrated into hundreds of microservices and now recording thousands of traces every second.
Here is the story of how we got here, from investigating off-the-shelf solutions like Zipkin, to why we switched from pull to push architecture, and how distributed tracing will continue to evolve:
https://eng.uber.com/distributed-tracing/
(GitHub Pages : https://www.jaegertracing.io/, GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger)
Bindings/Operator: Python Java Node.js Go C++ Kubernetes JavaScript OpenShift C# Apache Spark
Winds 2.0 is an open source Podcast/RSS reader developed by Stream with a core goal to enable a wide range of developers to contribute.
We chose JavaScript because nearly every developer knows or can, at the very least, read JavaScript. With ES6 and Node.js v10.x.x, it’s become a very capable language. Async/Await is powerful and easy to use (Async/Await vs Promises). Babel allows us to experiment with next-generation JavaScript (features that are not in the official JavaScript spec yet). Yarn allows us to consistently install packages quickly (and is filled with tons of new tricks)
We’re using JavaScript for everything – both front and backend. Most of our team is experienced with Go and Python, so Node was not an obvious choice for this app.
Sure... there will be haters who refuse to acknowledge that there is anything remotely positive about JavaScript (there are even rants on Hacker News about Node.js); however, without writing completely in JavaScript, we would not have seen the results we did.
#FrameworksFullStack #Languages
- Cross-browser testing8
- Open source4
- Easy setup/installation4
- Built in waits4
- UI End to End testing3
- Supports Devices without extra software/package2
- Both client and server side debug1
- No longer free9