Nightwatchjs vs Playwright

Overview

Nightwatchjs

Stacks214

Followers323

Votes11

GitHub Stars11.9K

Forks1.4K

Playwright

Stacks614

Followers586

Votes81

GitHub Stars79.0K

Forks4.8K

Nightwatchjs vs Playwright: What are the differences?

Nightwatch.js and Playwright are both popular automation testing frameworks used for testing web applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.

Testing Framework: Nightwatch.js is built on top of Node.js and uses the WebDriver protocol for automating browsers. On the other hand, Playwright is a browser automation library that provides a high-level API for interacting with browsers. Playwright supports multiple programming languages including JavaScript, Python, and C#.
Supported Browsers: Nightwatch.js supports a wide range of browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Playwright, on the other hand, supports Chrome, Firefox, WebKit (Safari), as well as Microsoft Edge. Playwright also provides cross-browser support, allowing you to write tests that can be run on multiple browsers.
Parallel Execution: Nightwatch.js supports parallel execution of tests, allowing you to run multiple tests concurrently. This can significantly reduce the overall test execution time. Playwright, on the other hand, does not have native support for parallel execution. However, you can achieve parallel execution by using additional tools or frameworks.
Test Execution Speed: Playwright is generally considered to be faster compared to Nightwatch.js when it comes to test execution speed. This is due to Playwright's use of browser-specific automation backends, which eliminates the need for a WebDriver server. Nightwatch.js, on the other hand, relies on the WebDriver protocol for browser automation, which can introduce some overhead.
Flexibility and Versatility: Nightwatch.js provides a built-in test runner and comes with a rich set of assertions and commands specifically designed for web application testing. It also integrates well with popular testing frameworks like Mocha and Jasmine. Playwright, on the other hand, offers a more versatile and modern approach to browser automation, allowing you to interact with not only web pages but also perform actions on iframes, web components, and more.
Documentation and Community Support: While both Nightwatch.js and Playwright have decent documentation and active community support, Nightwatch.js has been around for a longer time and has a larger user community. This means that there are more resources, tutorials, and community-driven plugins available for Nightwatch.js compared to Playwright.

In summary, Nightwatch.js is more mature and has better community support, while Playwright offers cross-browser support, faster test execution, and a more modern approach to browser automation.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Nightwatchjs	Playwright
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.	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.
e2e; test; javascript; nodejs	Node library; Headless supported; Enables cross-browser web automation; Improved automated UI testing
Statistics
GitHub Stars 11.9K	GitHub Stars 79.0K
GitHub Forks 1.4K	GitHub Forks 4.8K
Stacks 214	Stacks 614
Followers 323	Followers 586
Votes 11	Votes 81
Pros & Cons
Pros 3 Open source 2 Testing 2 Automates browsers 1 Better cross browser (use selenium) 1 Cross-Browser Testing Cons 2 No automatic wait 1 Limited native mobile app support 1 Configuration complexity 1 Limited browser support 1 Less flexibility	Pros 15 Cross browser 11 Open source 9 Test Runner with Playwright/test 7 Promise based 7 Well documented Cons 12 Less help 3 Node based 2 Does not execute outside of browser
Integrations
Node.js Selenium	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Nightwatchjs, Playwright?

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol. It can also be configured to use full (non-headless) Chrome.

TestingBot

TestingBot provides automated and Manual cross browser testing in the cloud. Make sure your website looks ok in all browsers.

Ghost Inspector

It lets you create and manage UI tests that check specific functionality in your website or application. We execute these automated browser tests continuously from the cloud and alert you if anything breaks.

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Nightwatchjs vs Playwright: What are the differences?

Nightwatch.js and Playwright are both popular automation testing frameworks used for testing web applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.

Testing Framework: Nightwatch.js is built on top of Node.js and uses the WebDriver protocol for automating browsers. On the other hand, Playwright is a browser automation library that provides a high-level API for interacting with browsers. Playwright supports multiple programming languages including JavaScript, Python, and C#.
Supported Browsers: Nightwatch.js supports a wide range of browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Playwright, on the other hand, supports Chrome, Firefox, WebKit (Safari), as well as Microsoft Edge. Playwright also provides cross-browser support, allowing you to write tests that can be run on multiple browsers.
Parallel Execution: Nightwatch.js supports parallel execution of tests, allowing you to run multiple tests concurrently. This can significantly reduce the overall test execution time. Playwright, on the other hand, does not have native support for parallel execution. However, you can achieve parallel execution by using additional tools or frameworks.
Test Execution Speed: Playwright is generally considered to be faster compared to Nightwatch.js when it comes to test execution speed. This is due to Playwright's use of browser-specific automation backends, which eliminates the need for a WebDriver server. Nightwatch.js, on the other hand, relies on the WebDriver protocol for browser automation, which can introduce some overhead.
Flexibility and Versatility: Nightwatch.js provides a built-in test runner and comes with a rich set of assertions and commands specifically designed for web application testing. It also integrates well with popular testing frameworks like Mocha and Jasmine. Playwright, on the other hand, offers a more versatile and modern approach to browser automation, allowing you to interact with not only web pages but also perform actions on iframes, web components, and more.
Documentation and Community Support: While both Nightwatch.js and Playwright have decent documentation and active community support, Nightwatch.js has been around for a longer time and has a larger user community. This means that there are more resources, tutorials, and community-driven plugins available for Nightwatch.js compared to Playwright.

In summary, Nightwatch.js is more mature and has better community support, while Playwright offers cross-browser support, faster test execution, and a more modern approach to browser automation.