A new journey of web automation

While talking about web automation, the very first thing comes to mind is usually Selenium.

It appears that Selenium is the most popular solution of web automation. Hands down, no dispute. Even many job descriptions list “experienced of Selenium” as a must requirement.

Still, there are various solutions of web automation. At iCHEF, we just started a journey with Cypress.io. I’m going to tell our findings.

First of all, we should acknowledge the limitations. I list some limitations here that you may concern.

1. It’s JavaScript only.
2. Currently, it supports only Chrome and Electron.

Then, you can easily find how to get started on Cypress website. If you aim for docker solution, official images are provided on Docker Hub.

We’ve been working with Cypress for a while. Comparing with Selenium, I have some very different experiences.

• Debug is much easier

Thanks to the fancy GUI tool. Live debugging is easy with Cypress. You can exactly check every step.

Of course, it also takes screenshots automatically on failure. Furthermore, it provides video clips of entire test suite!

• Test runs faster

Cypress runs test right in browser. Selenium makes remote call to browser. Apparently, it’s easy to figure out why Cypress runs faster.

By far, we execute 79 tests in 11 minutes.

• Less maintenance effort

If you are familiar with Selenium, you must realize that dealing with chromedriver is somehow a hard job. Platform changes or version updates might cause testing failure.

With Cypress, no need to worry about that kind of compatibility problem. You just focus on test.

Until now, to conclude our journey, I’ll say, give it a shot!

As the quote by Cypress.

The web has evolved.
Finally, testing has too.

We look forward to exploring more possibilities of web automation.