How different similar are Protractor and Selenium Which is better

Question

I'm currently working on a website developed on AngularJS. We started testing with Selenium WebDriver and the scripts works well. But I was told to use protractor instead of Selenium. Both are pretty similar in functioning but the ONLY difference I found is that, I don't need to use explicit wait to load the webpage. Are there any other differences or advantages or disadvantages i should be aware of?

Answer 1

Okay, so let me talk about the pros and cons of clear out the selenium vs protractor topic here:

SELENIUM

• Works great even if you are testing an Angular JS website, you only have to deal with page synchronization issues. 
• Selenium supports automation very well. It has been in the market for quite sometime & it has evolved over the years, and its API is also stable.
• Selenium is also the defacto tool in the open source market for browser automation.
• You can write the selenium code in 6 popular proogramming languages.

PROTRACTOR

• It is basically an automation testing tool for angular based web pages. But, when you look at its core, it's a wrapper for Webdriver JS. Hence it does not uncover any new vertical in browser automation.
• Yes, it has certain advantages in case of angular specific locator strategy. It provides more options to work with Angular directives (i.e angular specific locator strategy).
• It is available only for JavaScript. So to work with it, you must know JavaScript.
• This is a WebdriverJS, which is new in the market & depends completely on your project requirement and team's skills to use this tool.

Its not right to judge which of them is better at this point atleast. 

Answer 2

Protractor and Selenium both are used to automate front end of web based applications. Generally most of the people are well aware of Selenium ( Java and Python bindings) and afraid of choosing any other tool on top of Selenium. I will compare Selenium and Protractor in this post, which will help you to decide which tool is best suited for your requirement.

Official website of Selenium says that:- Selenium automates browser. It does not specify any specific technology based web applications. Selenium can be used to automate any technology based application which needs a browser.

Official website of Protractor says that:- Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor is designed specially for automating Angular applications. Although Protractor can be used for any non-angular application as well but the beauty of Protractor for Angular application will be missed.

Comments

Hi Amod, can you also demonstrate some example to make your comparison more clear?