Karma vs Protractor

Overview

Karma

Stacks4.8K

Followers603

Votes181

GitHub Stars12.0K

Forks1.7K

Protractor

Stacks2.2K

Followers543

Votes33

GitHub Stars8.7K

Forks2.3K

Karma vs Protractor: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Karma and Protractor are both popular testing frameworks in the Angular ecosystem. While they both serve the purpose of testing Angular applications, there are key differences that distinguish them from each other.

Testing Scope: Karma primarily focuses on unit testing, allowing developers to test individual components and services in isolation. On the other hand, Protractor is an end-to-end testing framework designed for testing the functionality of an application from a user's perspective, by simulating real user behavior in a browser environment.
Testing Environment: Karma runs tests in a real browser, providing a more accurate simulation of the application behavior. Protractor, on the other hand, runs tests in a WebDriver-based browser, allowing for automated interactions with the application.
Asynchronous Testing: Protractor has built-in support for handling asynchronous operations in Angular applications, making it easier to write and execute tests that involve asynchronous code. Karma, while capable of handling asynchronous operations, may require additional setup and configuration for testing asynchronous code.
Angular-specific Features: Protractor is specifically designed for testing Angular applications and provides built-in support for Angular-specific features like waiting for Angular to stabilize before performing actions. Karma, while compatible with Angular applications, may require additional plugins or configurations to test Angular-specific features seamlessly.
Integration with Testing Frameworks: Karma integrates seamlessly with popular testing frameworks like Jasmine and Mocha, allowing developers to write tests using their preferred framework. Protractor also integrates with Jasmine and Mocha but is primarily designed to work with the Jasmine testing framework, which is commonly used in Angular testing.
Configuration Complexity: In terms of configuration complexity, Protractor generally requires less setup and configuration compared to Karma. Protractor's configuration file is more straightforward and easier to set up for end-to-end testing, while Karma's configuration may involve more detailed settings for unit testing.

In Summary, when choosing between Karma and Protractor for testing Angular applications, consider the testing scope, environment, asynchronous testing support, Angular-specific features, integration with testing frameworks, and configuration complexity to make an informed decision based on your project's requirements.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Karma, Protractor

Yildiz

testmanager/automation tester at medicalservice

May 12, 2020

Needs adviceon

AngularJS

TypeScript

Cypress

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...

277k views277k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Karma	Protractor
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.	Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.
Test on Real Devices;Remote Control;Testing Framework Agnostic;Open Source;Easy Debugging;Continuous Integration	Test Like a User; For Angular Apps; Automatic Waiting
Statistics
GitHub Stars 12.0K	GitHub Stars 8.7K
GitHub Forks 1.7K	GitHub Forks 2.3K
Stacks 4.8K	Stacks 2.2K
Followers 603	Followers 543
Votes 181	Votes 33
Pros & Cons
Pros 61 Test Runner 35 Open source 27 Continuous Integration 22 Great for running tests 18 Test on Real Devices Cons 1 Requires the use of hacks to find tests dynamically 1 Slow, because tests are run in a real browser	Pros 9 Easy setup 8 Quick tests implementation 6 Flexible 5 Promise support 5 Open source Cons 4 Limited
Integrations
Jasmine Mocha	AngularJS Angular

What are some alternatives to Karma, Protractor?

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 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

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.

Mocha

Mocha is a feature-rich JavaScript test framework running on node.js and the browser, making asynchronous testing simple and fun. Mocha tests run serially, allowing for flexible and accurate reporting, while mapping uncaught exceptions to the correct test cases.

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.

Jasmine

Jasmine is a Behavior Driven Development testing framework for JavaScript. It does not rely on browsers, DOM, or any JavaScript framework. Thus it's suited for websites, Node.js projects, or anywhere that JavaScript can run.

Jest

Jest provides you with multiple layers on top of Jasmine.

Cypress

Cypress is a front end automated testing application created for the modern web. Cypress is built on a new architecture and runs in the same run-loop as the application being tested. As a result Cypress provides better, faster, and more reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Cypress works on any front-end framework or website.

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 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.

Related Comparisons

Karma vs Protractor: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Testing Scope: Karma primarily focuses on unit testing, allowing developers to test individual components and services in isolation. On the other hand, Protractor is an end-to-end testing framework designed for testing the functionality of an application from a user's perspective, by simulating real user behavior in a browser environment.
Testing Environment: Karma runs tests in a real browser, providing a more accurate simulation of the application behavior. Protractor, on the other hand, runs tests in a WebDriver-based browser, allowing for automated interactions with the application.
Asynchronous Testing: Protractor has built-in support for handling asynchronous operations in Angular applications, making it easier to write and execute tests that involve asynchronous code. Karma, while capable of handling asynchronous operations, may require additional setup and configuration for testing asynchronous code.
Angular-specific Features: Protractor is specifically designed for testing Angular applications and provides built-in support for Angular-specific features like waiting for Angular to stabilize before performing actions. Karma, while compatible with Angular applications, may require additional plugins or configurations to test Angular-specific features seamlessly.
Integration with Testing Frameworks: Karma integrates seamlessly with popular testing frameworks like Jasmine and Mocha, allowing developers to write tests using their preferred framework. Protractor also integrates with Jasmine and Mocha but is primarily designed to work with the Jasmine testing framework, which is commonly used in Angular testing.
Configuration Complexity: In terms of configuration complexity, Protractor generally requires less setup and configuration compared to Karma. Protractor's configuration file is more straightforward and easier to set up for end-to-end testing, while Karma's configuration may involve more detailed settings for unit testing.

Karma vs Protractor

Overview