Overview

Selenium

Stacks15.9K

Followers12.6K

Votes527

GitHub Stars33.6K

Forks8.6K

Watir

Stacks25

Followers38

Votes0

GitHub Stars1.5K

Forks248

Selenium vs Watir: What are the differences?

Introduction

Selenium and Watir are both popular open-source web automation frameworks used for testing web applications. While they serve a similar purpose, there are key differences between the two.

Programming Language Support: Selenium supports multiple programming languages like Java, C#, Python, Ruby, etc., making it more versatile for developers who have expertise in different languages. On the other hand, Watir primarily focuses on Ruby as its core language, limiting the options for developers who prefer other programming languages.
Browser Support: Selenium has excellent cross-browser compatibility and supports a wide range of browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc. It provides dedicated browser driver executables for each browser, allowing testers to automate their tests on different browsers seamlessly. Watir, on the other hand, relies on Selenium-WebDriver for browser automation, which means it can also support multiple browsers but may not have the exact same level of compatibility and driver support as Selenium.
API Design: Selenium follows the WebDriver API design, which is a well-established and widely adopted standard for web automation. It provides a clean and straightforward API for interacting with web elements, making it easy to understand and use. Watir, on the other hand, has its own API design, which may have a slight learning curve for those familiar with Selenium WebDriver. However, Watir's API emphasizes simplicity and readability, providing a more intuitive approach for testers.
Community and Documentation: Selenium has a larger and more active community compared to Watir, which means there is more community support, resources, and documentation available. Selenium has been around for a longer time and is widely used by organizations and individuals, resulting in a vast knowledge base. Watir has a smaller community but still maintains a good level of support and documentation.
Development Activity and Updates: Selenium is actively maintained and continuously updated with new features, bug fixes, and improvements by its large community of contributors. It has a more frequent release cycle, ensuring that it keeps up with the latest web technologies and trends. Watir, although not as actively developed as Selenium, still receives updates and bug fixes, but the frequency might be comparatively lower.
Integration with Other Tools/Frameworks: Selenium integrates well with various testing frameworks and tools like TestNG, JUnit, Maven, Jenkins, etc., allowing testers to build robust and scalable test automation frameworks. It also has extensive support for service virtualization, mobile testing, and other third-party libraries. Watir, being predominantly Ruby-based, has good integration with Ruby ecosystem and tools but may have limited support for other languages and third-party frameworks.

In summary, Selenium offers broader language support, better browser compatibility, a widely adopted API design, a larger community, and more frequent updates. Watir, on the other hand, focuses primarily on Ruby, offers simplicity in API design, and still maintains good support and integration within the Ruby ecosystem.

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Advice on Selenium, Watir

Shivam

Mar 5, 2020

Needs advice

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 ............................ ............................ .............................

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Selenium	Watir
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.	Watir, pronounced water, is an open-source (BSD) family of Ruby libraries for automating web browsers. It allows you to write tests that are easy to read and maintain. It is simple and flexible. Watir drives browsers the same way people do. It clicks links, fills in forms, presses buttons. Watir also checks results, such as…
-	The test scripts are written in Ruby language; It supports multiple domains and has a test recorder; It can find elements by its name, index, ID or value.
Statistics
GitHub Stars 33.6K	GitHub Stars 1.5K
GitHub Forks 8.6K	GitHub Forks 248
Stacks 15.9K	Stacks 25
Followers 12.6K	Followers 38
Votes 527	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 177 Automates browsers 154 Testing 101 Essential tool for running test automation 24 Record-Playback 24 Remote Control Cons 8 Flaky tests 4 Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui) 2 Update browser drivers	No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available	Ruby Rails Python

What are some alternatives to Selenium, Watir?

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.

Sauce Labs

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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.

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.

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.

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.