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

Capybara vs Nightwatchjs

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Capybara
Capybara
Stacks858
Followers191
Votes15
Nightwatchjs
Nightwatchjs
Stacks214
Followers323
Votes11
GitHub Stars11.9K
Forks1.4K

Capybara vs Nightwatchjs: What are the differences?

Capybara and Nightwatchjs are both popular testing frameworks used for automated testing of web applications. However, they have key differences that set them apart.

1. **Testing Approach**: Capybara is primarily used for feature testing in Ruby on Rails applications, focusing on simulating user interactions with the application through a web browser. On the other hand, Nightwatchjs is a framework for end-to-end testing of web applications that uses Selenium WebDriver and can test multiple browsers and operating systems simultaneously.
   
2. **Language Support**: Capybara is built for Ruby and works best with Ruby web applications, while Nightwatchjs is written in JavaScript and can be used for testing applications built with any language as long as it can be interacted with through a web browser.

3. **Implementation**: Capybara interacts with web applications using Rack applications or actual server requests in Ruby, whereas Nightwatchjs communicates with the web application through Selenium and WebDriver protocols, enabling cross-browser testing.

4. **Asynchronous Support**: Capybara handles asynchronous testing automatically using timeouts and waiting for specific elements to appear before proceeding with test execution. In contrast, Nightwatchjs provides explicit handling of asynchronous operations using built-in methods like `executeAsync` and `waitForElement`.

5. **Community and Ecosystem**: Capybara has been around longer, making it have a more robust community and ecosystem with a wide range of plugins and extensions available. Nightwatchjs, while growing in popularity, might have a smaller but equally supportive community.

In Summary, Capybara focuses on feature testing in Ruby web applications, while Nightwatchjs is more versatile with multi-browser testing capabilities using Selenium WebDriver.

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Detailed Comparison

Capybara
Capybara
Nightwatchjs
Nightwatchjs

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.

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.

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.
e2e; test; javascript; nodejs
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
11.9K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.4K
Stacks
858
Stacks
214
Followers
191
Followers
323
Votes
15
Votes
11
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
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Testing
  • 2
    Automates browsers
  • 1
    Better cross browser (use selenium)
  • 1
    Multiple Browser Support
Cons
  • 2
    No automatic wait
  • 1
    Less flexibility
  • 1
    Configuration complexity
  • 1
    Limited browser support
  • 1
    Limited native mobile app support
Integrations
Rails
Rails
Node.js
Node.js
Selenium
Selenium

What are some alternatives to Capybara, Nightwatchjs?

BrowserStack

BrowserStack

BrowserStack is the leading test platform built for developers & QAs to expand test coverage, scale & optimize testing with cross-browser, real device cloud, accessibility, visual testing, test management, and test observability.

Selenium

Selenium

Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well.

Sauce Labs

Sauce Labs

Cloud-based automated testing platform enables developers and QEs to perform functional, JavaScript unit, and manual tests with Selenium or Appium on web and mobile apps. Videos and screenshots for easy debugging. Secure and CI-ready.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest

LambdaTest platform provides secure, scalable and insightful test orchestration for website, and mobile app testing. Customers at different points in their DevOps lifecycle can leverage Automation and/or Manual testing on LambdaTest.

Karma

Karma

Karma is not a testing framework, nor an assertion library. Karma just launches a HTTP server, and generates the test runner HTML file you probably already know from your favourite testing framework. So for testing purposes you can use pretty much anything you like.

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.

Playwright

Playwright

It is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers with a single API. It enables cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.

Rainforest QA

Rainforest QA

Rainforest gives you the reliability of a QA team and the speed of automation, without the hassle of managing a team or the pain of writing automated tests.

WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO

WebdriverIO lets you control a browser or a mobile application with just a few lines of code. Your test code will look simple, concise and easy to read.

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