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Jasmine vs Protractor: What are the differences?
Introduction
Jasmine and Protractor are both popular frameworks used for testing JavaScript code. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two. This Markdown code provides a concise overview of these differences.
Jasmine: Jasmine is a behavior-driven development (BDD) testing framework for JavaScript code. It provides a way to write and organize tests and assertions in a human-readable format. Jasmine focuses on the syntactic structure of tests and provides a simple API to write tests.
Protractor: Protractor, on the other hand, is an end-to-end testing framework specifically designed for Angular applications. It uses the Selenium WebDriver to interact with the application. Protractor allows testing the behavior of an application in a real browser, including user interactions and navigation.
Syntax Style: In terms of syntax style, Jasmine uses a descriptive syntax that reads like natural language, making it more readable for developers. Protractor, being an extension of Jasmine, includes the same descriptive syntax style but with additional features specific to Angular applications.
Angular Features: Protractor has built-in support for Angular-specific features such as built-in waits, Angular bindings, and synchronizing with Angular's event loop. This makes Protractor more suitable for testing Angular applications compared to Jasmine.
Element Locators: Another significant difference between Jasmine and Protractor is in how they locate elements on the page. Jasmine primarily relies on CSS selectors and JavaScript DOM traversal methods to locate elements. Protractor, being an end-to-end testing framework, provides a higher-level API to locate elements using Angular-specific locators like
by.model
,by.binding
, orby.repeater
.Browser Automation: Protractor provides built-in browser automation capabilities through the Selenium WebDriver, allowing you to perform actions in a real browser environment. In contrast, Jasmine does not offer native browser automation, and the tests typically run in a headless mode or a simulated browser environment.
In summary, Jasmine is a versatile testing framework for JavaScript code, focusing on the syntactic structure of tests, while Protractor is a specialized end-to-end testing framework specifically designed for Angular applications, providing additional features for Angular-specific testing.
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
We use Mocha for our FDA verification testing. It's integrated into Meteor, our upstream web application framework. We like how battle tested it is, its' syntax, its' options of reporters, and countless other features. Most everybody can agree on mocha, and that gets us half-way through our FDA verification and validation (V&V) testing strategy.
Pros of Jasmine
- Can also be used for tdd64
- Open source49
- Originally from RSpec18
- Great community15
- No dependencies, not even DOM14
- Easy to setup10
- Simple8
- Created by Pivotal-Labs3
- Works with KarmaJs2
- Jasmine is faster than selenium in angular application1
- SpyOn to fake calls1
- Async and promises are easy calls with "done"1
Pros of Protractor
- Easy setup9
- Quick tests implementation8
- Flexible6
- Open source5
- Promise support5
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Cons of Jasmine
- Unfriendly error logs2
Cons of Protractor
- Limited4