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Cypress vs Storybook: What are the differences?
Cypress and Storybook are popular tools used in modern web development to enhance the testing and documentation of JavaScript applications. Below are the key differences between Cypress and Storybook:
Purpose and Focus: Cypress is primarily a testing framework designed for end-to-end testing of web applications. It focuses on automating the interaction of a user with the application, simulating real user actions, and verifying the application's behavior. On the other hand, Storybook is a development environment and documentation tool specifically for UI components. It allows developers to isolate, build, and showcase individual components in an interactive sandbox, making it easier to develop and document UI components independently.
Testing Capabilities: Cypress provides a powerful and comprehensive testing API, allowing developers to write tests in JavaScript to simulate user interactions and verify application functionality. It offers features like time-travel debugging, automatic waiting, and real-time reloading during test development. Storybook, on the other hand, is not a testing framework but rather a tool for component-driven development and documentation. It does not run end-to-end tests but focuses on visual testing and component presentation.
Test Environment: Cypress runs tests directly in the browser, enabling it to interact with the application as a user would. This provides a realistic testing environment, ensuring that the tests closely resemble real-world user scenarios. Storybook, on the other hand, renders components in a sandbox environment separate from the application context. It does not simulate end-to-end scenarios like Cypress but instead helps developers visualize and test components in isolation.
Use Cases: Cypress is suitable for projects that require robust end-to-end testing to verify the overall application functionality and user interactions. It excels in ensuring critical flows and interactions are bug-free. On the other hand, Storybook is ideal for projects that heavily focus on component-driven development, UI design, and component documentation. It is a valuable tool for large projects with extensive component libraries and design systems.
Integration with Other Tools: Cypress integrates well with popular testing frameworks and continuous integration tools, making it easy to incorporate into the development workflow. It also has support for popular assertion libraries like Chai and Jest. Storybook integrates with various frameworks and libraries and can be used alongside testing tools like Cypress to showcase and document components.
In summary, Cypress excels in end-to-end testing, providing a realistic user interaction environment for comprehensive application testing. On the other hand, Storybook focuses on component-driven development and documentation, making it easier to develop and showcase UI components independently.
In the company I will be building test automation framework and my new company develops apps mainly using AngularJS/TypeScript. I was planning to build Protractor-Jasmine framework but a friend of mine told me about Cypress and heard that its users are very satisfied with it. I am trying to understand the capabilities of Cypress and as the final goal to differentiate these two tools. Can anyone advice me on this in a nutshell pls...
I've used both Protractor and Cypress extensively. Cypress is the easier and more reliable tool, whereas Protractor is the more powerful tool. Your choice of tool should depend on your specific testing needs. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each tool:
Cypress advantages:
Faster
More reliable (tends to throw fewer intermittent false failures)
Easier to read code (handles promises gracefully)
Cypress disadvantages:
Cannot switch between browser tabs
Cannot switch to iFrames
Cannot specify clicks or keypresses explicitly as if a real user was interacting
Cannot move the mouse to specific co-ordinates
Sometimes has trouble switching between different top-level domains, so not good for testing external links
Cypress is a newer tool with less extensive documentation and less community support
Protractor advantages:
More powerful because it is Selenium-based - it can switch between tabs, it can handle external links to other domains, it can handle iFrames, simulate keypresses and clicks, and move the mouse to specific co-ordinates within the browser.
More extensive community support and documentation
Protractor disadvantages:
Slower and more brittle - in general there is a higher likelihood of cryptic and/or intermittent errors which may cause your tests to fail even though there is nothing wrong with your application
For highly experienced automation engineers, the fundamental "brittle" nature of Selenium can be worked around - it can be reliable but only if you really know what you are doing
Less graceful handling of promises - relies on async/await or .then to manage the order of execution. Therefore it is a bit harder to read the code.
Harder to set up, and the method of setup impacts its reliability. For example, a hub/node configuration where the selenium jar is on a different physical machine than the browser under test will cause unreliability in your tests. Not everyone knows about this type of thing, so it's common to find Selenium frameworks that are set up poorly.
It's probably better to use Cypress if
you're at a smaller company and have a close relationship with developers who can help write hooks or stubs in their code to assist your testing
you don't need to do things like switch between tabs or test links to external top-level domains
It's probably better to use Protractor if
You might need to switch between tabs or test external links to other domains within the scope of your framework
You want to use a more accurate simulation of how a real user interacts with a browser (i.e. click at this location, type these keys)
You're at a company where you won't have any support from developers in writing hooks or stubs to make their code more testable in a less powerful framework like Cypress
Please try Handow, the e2e tool basing on Puppeteer.
Gherkin syntax compatible
Chrome/Chromium orentied, driven by Puppeteer engine
Complete JavaScript programming
Create test suites rapidly without coding (or a little bit), basing on built-in steps library
Schedule test with plans and arrange stories with sequential stages
Fast running, execute story groups in parallel by multi-workers
Built-in single page report render
Cover page view, REST API and cookies test
As we all know testing is an important part of any application. To assist with our testing we are going to use both Cypress and Jest. We feel these tools complement each other and will help us get good coverage of our code. We will use Cypress for our end to end testing as we've found it quite user friendly. Jest will be used for our unit tests because we've seen how many larger companies use it with great success.
Pros of Cypress
- Open source29
- Great documentation22
- Simple usage20
- Fast18
- Cross Browser testing10
- Easy us with CI9
- Npm install cypress only5
- Good for beginner automation engineers2
Pros of Storybook
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Cons of Cypress
- 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