Cypress Vs Selenium

QA teams and developers are increasingly using test automation frameworks and tools. They can use approaches, tools, assumptions, and libraries across departments by using open-source frameworks. Apart from Selenium, another tool that has gained popularity is Cypress.io.
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The existence of functional test automation would not be possible without Cypress.io. This new tool has received a lot of attention, and for a good reason. In some ways, Cypress makes automation testing fun and cool because it's fast, reliable, and interactive. But has Cypress proven to be the best alternative to Selenium WebDriver? If so, how?
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Does Cypress have the power to topple the current king? First, however, it needs to be questioned whether Cypress was created to replace Selenium WebDriver. Comparing the two testing tools reveals that while they share a lot in common, each has different characteristics than letting it go its way.
Here's a closer look at what these two tools do and how they differ.

What is Selenium?

‍‍Selenium is a web application testing framework that supports different platforms and browsers and is open-source. For the past decade, the Selenium WebDriver library and its language-specific framework have been a consistent choice among testers. Quality assurance teams can automate complex test cases for any browser with this software.
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To automate tests with Selenium, developers need to download drivers for their browser of choice. For example, Firefox users can download the Gecko driver, Chrome users can download ChromeDriver, and so on. Then, configure the correct language driver for their system. It's compatible with nearly all popular programming languages, including Java, JavaScript, C, C#, Ruby, and Python. Selenium gives QA teams and web developers the flexibility to work with a language of their choice.
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Although Selenium is challenging to learn and requires at least one programming language, it boasts a large and active user community, even holding an annual user conference. In addition, selenium is fundamental to ensuring cross-browser testing due to its ability to test across the most popular browsers.

Since Selenium testing has become more popular, it has become an integral part of many automation strategies and a crucial component of tools like CrossBrowserTesting. When you learn Selenium, you can use cloud-based testing tools to access thousands of browsers simultaneously and speed up testing.

Key benefits of Selenium

‍The Selenium tool has been essential for test automation and will likely remain so for years to come. There are several benefits it brings to the table that make it popular:

• There is a wide array of languages that can be used, such as Java, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby.
• Supports Linux, Unix, Mac OS and Windows.
• Browser compatibility with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge.
• Relevant and concise APIs
• Scripts can be executed concurrently or in parallel by Selenium.

Drawbacks of Selenium

‍Selenium does not have all the cutting-edge features that promote diversity and ease of use that make it so popular. Although it is not perfect, some of its shortcomings include:

• Inability to automate the generation of test results
• Supports Linux, Unix, Mac OS and Windows.
• Element load or page load complexity
• Test images are not adequately supported

How to install Selenium?

‍At the time of writing, Selenium can automate all major browsers with WebDriver, a tool for modifying the behavior of web browsers through a language-neutral API and protocol. Selenium communicates with each browser through a driver, which delegates control down to the browser. In addition, each browser provides an implementation of WebDriver to facilitate communication between the two.
A Selenium setup is different from other commercial tools. Before beginning to code Selenium, you must choose your language, browser, and browser driver.

Install the Selenium library

You can install Selenium for your preferred programming language by following the steps below.

As part of the first stage of automation projects, install Selenium bindings. Depending on the language you choose, you will need to install libraries.

Here, we are installing Selenium via Python. The Selenium Python libraries can be installed using pip:

You can also use the PyPI source archive (selenium-x.x.x.tar.gz) to install Selenium and setup.py:

Set up the browser drivers

‍Automate a browser by setting it up on your system.

With Selenium's WebDriver, you can connect to all major browsers, including Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera. In addition, the automated feature of WebDriver will be used if the browser supports it. Selenium does not include these implementations in the standard distribution because no browser vendors provide them.

Use Selenium to open and close browsers.

‍Installing and configuring a Selenium library and a browser driver allow you to start and stop sessions in the browser. Upon starting a browser, it will usually provide settings that describe what capabilities it should support and how the session should be handled. Of course, each browser's capabilities differ, but all of them share some.

Chrome

‍Chrome v75 and above are required to run Selenium 4. In addition, ensure that Chrome and Chrome driver are both the same version as your Chrome browser.

Chrome has its features on top of the shared ones.

Start writing a Selenium script

‍A step-by-step guide to writing a Selenium script
Installing Selenium and its drivers gives you the ability to write Selenium code.
Eight essential components
When Selenium calls the browser, it requests information or sends commands to it. There are several basic Selenium commands that you will frequently use:

1. Set up the session
2. Click on the browser button.
3. Get browser information
4. Plan a wait-time strategy
5. Identify an element
6. Act on the element
7. Find out about elements.
8. Session ends

Bringing everything together

‍The following eight points form a complete script

       from selenium import webdriver
        
        from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
        
        driver = webdriver.Chrome()
        
        driver.get("https://www.google.com")
       
        driver.title # => "Google"
        
        driver.implicitly_wait(0.5)
        
        search_box = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "q")
        search_button = driver.find_element(By.NAME, "btnK")
        
        search_box.send_keys("Selenium")
        search_button.click()
        
        driver.find_element(By.NAME, "q").get_attribute("value") # => "Selenium"
        
        driver.quit()
      
     
      

What is Cypress?

‍Cypress is a JavaScript front-end testing application that uses mocha framework to run asynchronous tests within the browser. It was created in response to the changing requirements of the modern web.

Cypress is capable of assisting with writing both unit and integration tests. Shortly, Cypress is both architecturally and logically different from Selenium.

Using Cypress, developers can implement frontend code and test unit functionality with an agile testing methodology. Cypress is based upon the JavaScript language, which can be both Cypress's strength and weakness, depending on the user's needs.

Cypress automation has the same phases as other automation frameworks.

‍Test creation > Scripting the tests > Testing > Debugging the tests.

‍Front-end developers familiar with JavaScript will find Cypress an invaluable tool, but their effectiveness will be diminished if they do not adhere to these specific parameters.

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Key benefits of Cypress

‍Cypress, a fast, reliable, and futuristic tool, makes test automation possible. Here are some contributing factors:

• A snapshot provides developers and quality assurance teams with a complete overview of what occurred at the moment of test execution.
• Test scripts with fewer commands are faster to run.
• Users can control how functions, timers, and server responses function through Clocks, Stubs, and Spies and verify the results of these actions.
• A developer or QA engineer can view all elements before executing an action when the scrolling operation is enabled.
• Testing with Cypress is possible for applications using Angular, React, Vue, and JavaScript.

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Disadvantages of Cypress

‍Although this tool is new and exciting, there is room for improvement. There are several notable flaws about it:

• You can't use it to run two browsers at once.
• iFrames are only limitedly supported in Cypress, and the platform lacks multiple tab support.
• At present, Cypress is incompatible with Internet Explorer and Safari.

Installing Cypress via NPM

‍Launch pm (the Node package manager) from the project directory and run the following command:

Package.json is created by running the command above. The package name, description, keywords, and author are just a few of the basic details to include. After filling in all the relevant details, the package.json file looks like the following.

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You will need to run the following command after completing the installation.

This command instals Cypress locally for the given project as a development dependency.

Compare Cypress and Selenium

‍The Selenium framework and Cypress are both open-source tools for automating web tests. Listed below are their key differences.

Now that we've compared Cypress and Selenium, it's time to see whether the new entry is as good as its competitors. Can Cypress replace Selenium? Does each tool serve a different purpose? The comparison is as follows:

Front-end vs. end-to-end testing

‍Using Selenium WebDriver, you can test web applications end-to-end. This type of testing is relatively new among developers, so QA managers have extensively used it for frontend testing. This trend has been reinforced in agile software development methodologies since front-end developers must test their code before the method is truly leveraged. Developing test code and integration and end-to-end functional tests for frontend builders enable them to evaluate how their creations work on actual browsers.

Language support

‍The significant difference between Cypress and Selenium is that Cypress is an open-source tool that supports various languages, including Python, C#, Ruby, Objective-C, R, Dart, and JavaScript. At the same time, Selenium is only available as a JavaScript-based product. Even though this tool is primarily aimed at frontend developers using JavaScript, it is not accurate to claim it is a limitation of Cypress because web browsers only understand this language. Cypress can handle a wide range of users' needs even if it supports only one language. Because it is widely used worldwide, this powerful and concise language is suitable for a wide range of users. In contrast, Selenium, a regression testing tool and an end-to-end tool, allows for multiple language bindings for its API. Because of this, it is a better choice for teams that perform multiple tasks.

The Test Framework

‍In terms of testing frameworks, Cypress offers more than language options. The only way to use Cypress's Mocha framework is to write tests. Mocha serves the same function as NUnit or Junit in Java in C#. Cypress provides only a specific testing framework for JavaScript, however. Frontend developers who use this testing tool cannot use Jest or Tape, as Cypress only provides a specific testing framework.

In contrast, Selenium WebDriver does not suffer from such limitations. It should be noted that Selenium testing does not even require a testing framework. The method collects information from a browser and crawls web pages.

Integrated server mocking

‍Cypress is sometimes boasted as being faster than Selenium. A key part of its performance is its built-in mocking functionality. Cypress understands that most front-end developers have redundant needs since they are focused on the needs of their target users. Therefore, they use mock XML HTTP requests instead to speed up testing. This approach will be seamless and faster as part of Cypress's integrated mocking functionality. Selenium WebDriver allows you to mock server responses, but it's a little more complicated. As a result, Selenium mock servers return accurate responses to accurately mock server responses. Thus, a built-in server mocking function makes things more accessible and efficient.

FAQs

Q1. Does Cypress perform better than Selenium?

The purposes of Selenium and Cypress are different. There is a wide audience for Selenium. However, Cypress is a different product with a different target market from the one that uses Web automation testing. Choosing a tool based on your needs comes down to knowing your requirements.
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Q2. Does Cypress replace Selenium?

Cypress is ideally suited for developers new to test automation rather than similarly replacing Selenium. As such, it is one of the fastest-growing automation tools on the planet. However, Selenium is more suitable for a broader audience and is more general-purpose.
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Q3. Which tool is better than Selenium?

Cypress, a JavaScript test automation solution, is one of the most popular alternatives to Selenium. It enables testers to code JavaScript scripts to automate web tests, which can be used in web testing processes. In recent years, Cypress has gained traction as an alternative to Selenium for test automation.
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Q4. Why is Cypress so popular?

The comparison between Cypress and Selenium is primarily due to the developer community's increasing interest in Cypress. It is possible to write unit tests, end-to-end tests, and integration tests with Cypress. In addition, Cypress supports only JavaScript, unlike Selenium WebDriver, which supports multiple languages.
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Q5. Should I use Cypress?

A huge use case for Cypress has been front-end testing. As a result, the Cypress tool is an excellent option for users familiar with JavaScript and looking to automate testing on their local machine.

Conclusion

‍With Selenium and Cypress as our benchmarks, we discussed two major web automation testing players: Selenium and Cypress. The emerging technology (Cypress) aims to gain ground.
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Cypress offers many features that Selenium lacks, such as automatic scrolling, reloading in real-time, time travel, and top-notch performance.
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Meanwhile, Selenium offers features like remote execution, cross-browser compatibility, provision to perform tests in different programming languages, and more.
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Considering how different Selenium and Cypress are, it would be wise to select an appropriate tool for your needs, skill-set, etc. Always look at the long-term implications of your choice and be sure to make the right choice.