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

Capybara vs Karate DSL

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Capybara
Capybara
Stacks858
Followers191
Votes15
Karate DSL
Karate DSL
Stacks148
Followers268
Votes85

Capybara vs Karate DSL: 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, Karate DSL is detailed as "Open Source Web-Services Test Automation Framework". 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.

Capybara and Karate DSL can be primarily classified as "Testing Frameworks" tools.

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, Karate DSL provides the following key features:

  • Native support for both JSON and XML
  • Powerful payload assertions with "deep-equals"
  • Data-driven testing

"Best acceptance test framework for Ruby on Rails apps" is the top reason why over 7 developers like Capybara, while over 2 developers mention "Easy CI integration via cross-platform executable / CLI" as the leading cause for choosing Karate DSL.

Capybara and Karate DSL are both open source tools. It seems that Capybara with 8.85K GitHub stars and 1.29K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Karate DSL with 2.12K GitHub stars and 526 GitHub forks.

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Detailed Comparison

Capybara
Capybara
Karate DSL
Karate DSL

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.

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.

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.
Native support for both JSON and XML; Powerful payload assertions with "deep-equals"; Data-driven testing; Easy even for non-programmers; Embedded JavaScript engine; Test-doubles or HTTP mocking built-in; Re-use test scripts as performance-tests; Environment switching; Comprehensive reports, supported by all CI tools
Statistics
Stacks
858
Stacks
148
Followers
191
Followers
268
Votes
15
Votes
85
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
  • 11
    Easy CI integration via cross-platform executable / CLI
  • 9
    Easy for even non-programmers to get started
  • 9
    Simple and meaningful asserts for large responses
  • 7
    Data-driven tests that can even use JSON or CSV sources
  • 5
    Very fast api testing tool
Cons
  • 1
    Confusing report: Summarized by steps and not by featur
  • 1
    Complex folder structure, without a defined pattern
  • 1
    Karate uses its own scripting language
  • 1
    There is no IntelliSense support in IDE
  • 1
    Finding errors in code is not easy
Integrations
Rails
Rails
JavaScript
JavaScript
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Java
Java
Cucumber
Cucumber
IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ IDEA
JUnit
JUnit
Eclipse
Eclipse

What are some alternatives to Capybara, Karate DSL?

Postman

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Paw

Paw

Paw is a full-featured and beautifully designed Mac app that makes interaction with REST services delightful. Either you are an API maker or consumer, Paw helps you build HTTP requests, inspect the server's response and even generate client code.

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.

Appwrite

Appwrite

Appwrite's open-source platform lets you add Auth, DBs, Functions and Storage to your product and build any application at any scale, own your data, and use your preferred coding languages and tools.

Runscope

Runscope

Keep tabs on all aspects of your API's performance with uptime monitoring, integration testing, logging and real-time monitoring.

Insomnia REST Client

Insomnia REST Client

Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.

RAML

RAML

RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly.

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.

Apigee

Apigee

API management, design, analytics, and security are at the heart of modern digital architecture. The Apigee intelligent API platform is a complete solution for moving business to the digital world.

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.

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