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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Testing Frameworks
  5. Capybara vs Detox

Capybara vs Detox

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Capybara
Capybara
Stacks858
Followers191
Votes15
Detox
Detox
Stacks137
Followers95
Votes9
GitHub Stars11.7K
Forks1.9K

Capybara vs Detox: What are the differences?

Developers describe Capybara as "Acceptance test framework for web applications". Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem. On the other hand, Detox is detailed as "Gray box end-to-end testing and automation library for mobile apps". High velocity native mobile development requires us to adopt continuous integration workflows, which means our reliance on manual QA has to drop significantly. It tests your mobile app while it's running in a real device/simulator, interacting with it just like a real user.

Capybara and Detox belong to "Testing Frameworks" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Capybara are:

  • No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.
  • Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.
  • Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.

On the other hand, Detox provides the following key features:

  • Automatically Synchronized
  • Test Runner Independent
  • Debuggable

Capybara and Detox are both open source tools. It seems that Capybara with 8.87K GitHub stars and 1.3K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Detox with 5.06K GitHub stars and 863 GitHub forks.

Indiegogo, GrowthHackers, and sQuidd.io are some of the popular companies that use Capybara, whereas Detox is used by Glorgo, Jumpn, and Wix. Capybara has a broader approval, being mentioned in 52 company stacks & 95 developers stacks; compared to Detox, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Capybara
Capybara
Detox
Detox

Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.

High velocity native mobile development requires us to adopt continuous integration workflows, which means our reliance on manual QA has to drop significantly. It tests your mobile app while it's running in a real device/simulator, interacting with it just like a real user.

No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.;Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.;Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.;Powerful synchronization features mean you never have to manually wait for asynchronous processes to complete.
Automatically Synchronized; Test Runner Independent; Debuggable
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
11.7K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.9K
Stacks
858
Stacks
137
Followers
191
Followers
95
Votes
15
Votes
9
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 12
    Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps
  • 2
    Synchronous with Rack::Test
  • 1
    Fast with Rack::Test
Cons
  • 1
    Hard to make reproducible tests when using with browser
Pros
  • 6
    Grey box testing
  • 3
    Automated testing
Integrations
Rails
Rails
JavaScript
JavaScript
React Native
React Native
macOS
macOS

What are some alternatives to Capybara, Detox?

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

It is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Cucumber

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.

TestCafe

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.

Spock Framework

Spock Framework

It is a testing and specification framework for Java and Groovy applications. What makes it stand out from the crowd is its beautiful and highly expressive specification language. It is compatible with most IDEs, build tools, and continuous integration servers.

Selenide

Selenide

It is a library for writing concise, readable, boilerplate-free tests in Java using Selenium WebDriver.

PHPUnit

PHPUnit

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP. It is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

Imagium

Imagium

Imagium provides AI based visual testing solution for various forms of testing. It makes the job easier for QA Automation, Mobile Testers, DevOps and Compliance teams. Imagium is easy to integrate with any programing language

Codeception

Codeception

Full-stack testing framework for PHP. Run browsers tests, framework tests, APIs tests, unit tests with ease.

react-testing-library

react-testing-library

It is a simple and complete React DOM testing utility that encourage good testing practices. It provides light utility functions on top of react-dom and react-dom/test-utils, in a way that encourages better testing practices.

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