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PhantomJS vs Selenium: What are the differences?
Key Differences between PhantomJS and Selenium
PhantomJS and Selenium are both popular tools used for web testing and automation. While they serve similar purposes, there are some key differences between the two.
Execution Environment: PhantomJS is a headless browser that can execute JavaScript in an environment without a graphical user interface, making it suitable for server-side testing. On the other hand, Selenium requires a graphical user interface to execute tests and interact with web elements.
Language Support: PhantomJS is primarily based on JavaScript and supports only JavaScript for writing test scripts. Selenium, on the other hand, supports multiple languages such as Java, C#, Ruby, Python, and more, providing developers with a wider range of options.
Browser Compatibility: Selenium can automate testing across multiple web browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. PhantomJS, being a headless browser, does not have the same compatibility and is limited to simulating a specific rendering engine.
Development and Maintenance: Selenium is an open-source project with a large community of contributors, making it well-documented and continuously maintained. PhantomJS, although it was widely used in the past, is no longer actively maintained and has been deprecated in favor of other tools.
Execution Speed: PhantomJS is known for its fast execution speed as it does not require rendering and displaying web pages. This makes it suitable for tasks that require fast processing, such as web scraping. In comparison, Selenium may have a slower execution speed due to its need to interact with actual browser instances.
Visual Testing: Selenium provides better support for visual testing as it can interact with real browser instances and capture screenshots or compare images for visual regression testing. PhantomJS, being headless, does not have the same capabilities for visual testing.
In summary, PhantomJS is a headless browser with fast execution speed, limited browser compatibility, and primarily supports JavaScript. Selenium, on the other hand, supports multiple languages, has better browser compatibility, supports visual testing, and is continuously maintained by a large community.
we are having one web application developed in Reacts.js. in the application, we have only 4 to 5 pages that we need to test. I am having experience in selenium with java. Please suggets which tool I should use. and why ............................ ............................ .............................
with the help of selenium we can automate react js for functional testing
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
Pros of PhantomJS
- Scriptable web browser13
- Depends on QT3
- No ECMAScript 62
Pros of Selenium
- Automates browsers177
- Testing154
- Essential tool for running test automation101
- Record-Playback24
- Remote Control24
- Data crawling8
- Supports end to end testing7
- Easy set up6
- Functional testing6
- The Most flexible monitoring system4
- End to End Testing3
- Easy to integrate with build tools3
- Comparing the performance selenium is faster than jasm2
- Record and playback2
- Compatible with Python2
- Easy to scale2
- Integration Tests2
- Integrated into Selenium-Jupiter framework0
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Cons of PhantomJS
Cons of Selenium
- Flaky tests8
- Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui)4
- Update browser drivers2