Protractor vs Selenium

Table of content

Differences between selenium and protractor

Differences between selenium and protractor

In this tutorial, we will try to explore the significant difference between selenium and protractor.

Application of testing in Selenium and Protractor :

We automate the web applications using the selenium webdriver with java or with the language of choice. People might say that use protractor when the web application is built on the angular application, that is bullshit.

We should go for Protractor only when your team does not have the skill to handle the ajax & angular waits using fluent wait in selenium.

In a similar manner, you can use the protractor to automate the non-angular application, just by setting browser.ignoreSynchronization = true.

One more myth about automation, you should automate using the same language as the development language. Please do aware that application development language does not have any effect on the web browser because the web browser renders the only UI using HTML, CSS, JS.

So when you compare selenium & protractor based on the application, then you will not get justification to choose one tool.

handle Dropdowns with Protractor

Language of Choice Selenium and Protractor :

When you are hiring people for automaton jobs, you should be getting more of java people but less of typescript people because people who know typescript tries to get a job in development, not in testing.

So you might get java people for automaton, instead of training them on protractor training them on waits in selenium, so that you could you selenium as your automation too.

Selenium supports: java, python, kotlin, c, c#, Php.
Protractor supports: Typescript and JavaScript (basically all js related languages).

Handle Authentication Pop Up with Protractor

Unit Testing Framework Selenium and Protractor :

When we choose between selenium and protractor, we also should mind about the unit testing framework that we are going to use.

Selenium supports many unit testing frameworks, TestNG and JUnit are two important unit testing frameworks.

Protractor Supports Jasmine and Mocha frameworks and also protractor work well with chai assertions.

When we compare the TestNG and the Jasmine, TestNG wins as TestNG has below advantages over Jasmine:

We can execute the test cases sequentially even when test cases are not in sequentially aligned, but protractor executes based on the position of the Test case (Where the code is written)
Priority in TestNG plays a major role in executing the test cases in order, no priority in Jasmine test cases
With just right click you can generate the testng.xml(runner), but you got to write the conf file manually for Jasmine
You can run the test cases using a condition in TestNG but not possible in Jasmine
The Parallel run occurs based on the Tests, classes in TestNG but Jasmine runs the files in Parallel (if you have 1000 test cases in a single file then you cannot run them in parallel, all 1000 will get executed only sequentially)

Headless Browser in Protractor

Selenium vs. Protractor Code length:

Another noticeable difference is the code length; we will be able to achieve the target in fewer lines in Java with selenium.

Code length is more because all of the fetch operations returns a promise, so you got to solve the promises first, so the code length is more.

Remote Execution in Selenium and Protractor:

Both selenium and protractor run remote execution using the selenium server jar, so there is not much difference in the grid. The only change would be the configuration for the grid and choice of browser.

Protractor vs. selenium performance:

Comparing the performance selenium is faster than Protractor on the normal application, but protractor is faster than selenium in angular application.

Protractor got inbuilt waits for angular and ajax calls, but we have to define the waits in selenium to handle angular and ajax.

Protractor vs. selenium speed is not comparable as their strategies are different.

Selenium ide vs. protractor:

I know this comparison should not be here, but let's see this as well. Selenium IDE (SIDE) is browser-based to this will be installed an add-on to the browser. W can use the SIDe for recording the actions and then perform it on the application. SIDE is not as flexible as selenium Webdriver.

The protractor has no recording option but more flexible when compared with SIDE. SIDE supports the non-angular apps in a good way but not angular apps.

Browser Commands in protractor

Protractor vs. Jasmine:

Protractor is a testing tool, but Jasmine is a unit testing framework. Jasmine performs the operations; Jasmine helps to structure those operations as test cases.

protractor supports all the nodejs based unit frameworks like Jasmine, Mocha, chai(assertion library), Karma(runner), here the karma is not bi***.

Jasmine vs. Cucumber:

We can write the tests in Jasmine like cucumber in a descriptive way, but Cucumber is a different kind when compared with Jasmine

Cucumber works based on the gherkin file descriptions, and it will have separate step_definitions.

We cannot use the combination of cucumber and Jasmine. These are the key differences between protractor and selenium

Handle Frames in Protractor

protractor vs. selenium ppt:

You can download the protractor vs. selenium ppt by clicking

protractor vs. selenium pdf:

You can download the protractor vs. selenium pdf by clicking

Protractor Interview Questions