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Protractor vs QUnit: What are the differences?

<Protractor vs QUnit>

1. **Testing Approach**: Protractor is designed specifically for testing AngularJS applications, providing a framework that interacts with Angular elements and waits for Angular to process before executing test commands. QUnit, on the other hand, is a general-purpose JavaScript testing framework that can be used for any JavaScript project, not limited to Angular applications.

2. **Asynchronous Testing**: Protractor inherently supports asynchronous testing by using WebDriverJS, which handles promises for asynchronous execution. QUnit also supports asynchronous testing, but it requires additional plugins or libraries to handle asynchronous operations effectively.

3. **Feature Set**: Protractor is built on top of WebDriverJS and offers a rich set of features tailored for testing Angular applications, such as handling Angular-specific elements, synchronization, and waiting for Angular's digest cycle. QUnit, being a lightweight framework, provides essential testing functionalities without the specialized features for Angular applications.

4. **Community Support**: Protractor enjoys robust community support from the AngularJS community, ongoing development, and updates to align with changes in Angular. QUnit, while maintained and supported by its contributors, may have a smaller user base and community compared to Protractor.

5. **Integration with Testing Tools**: Protractor seamlessly integrates with tools like Jasmine or Mocha for test reporting and assertion libraries. QUnit, being a standalone framework, may require additional configuration or plugins to achieve similar integrations with other testing tools.

6. **Documentation and Resources**: Protractor offers extensive documentation and resources specifically tailored for testing Angular applications, including guides, tutorials, and examples. QUnit also provides documentation and resources, but they may be more generalized and lack the specialized guidance for Angular testing scenarios.

In Summary, Protractor and QUnit differ in their testing approach, asynchronous testing support, feature set, community support, integration with testing tools, and availability of specialized documentation for Angular applications.
Advice on Protractor and QUnit
Yildiz Dila
testmanager/automation tester at medicalservice · | 5 upvotes · 272.4K views
Needs advice
on
CypressCypress
and
ProtractorProtractor

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...

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Replies (2)
Kevin Emery
QE Systems Engineer at Discovery, Inc. · | 4 upvotes · 167.8K views
Recommends
on
CypressCypressProtractorProtractor

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

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Jian Wang
Web Engineer at sentaca · | 1 upvotes · 196.6K views
Recommends

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

https://github.com/newlifewj/handow

http://demo.shm.handow.org/reports

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Pros of Protractor
Pros of QUnit
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Quick tests implementation
  • 6
    Flexible
  • 5
    Open source
  • 5
    Promise support
  • 6
    Simple
  • 4
    Open Source
  • 3
    Promise support
  • 3
    Easy setup
  • 1
    Excellent GUI

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Cons of Protractor
Cons of QUnit
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    Limited
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    What is Protractor?

    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.

    What is QUnit?

    QUnit is a powerful, easy-to-use JavaScript unit testing framework. It's used by the jQuery, jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile projects and is capable of testing any generic JavaScript code, including itself!

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    What companies use Protractor?
    What companies use QUnit?
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    What tools integrate with Protractor?
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    What are some alternatives to Protractor and QUnit?
    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.
    PhantomJS
    PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with JavaScript. It is used by hundreds of developers and dozens of organizations for web-related development workflow.
    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.
    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.
    Compass
    The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions.
    See all alternatives