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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Testing Frameworks
  4. Browser Testing
  5. Cucumber vs Selenium

Cucumber vs Selenium

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Selenium
Selenium
Stacks16.2K
Followers12.6K
Votes527
GitHub Stars33.6K
Forks8.6K
Cucumber
Cucumber
Stacks1.4K
Followers927
Votes36

Cucumber vs Selenium: What are the differences?

<Write Introduction here>
  1. Programming Language: One key difference between Cucumber and Selenium is that Cucumber is primarily focused on behavior-driven development (BDD) and uses the Gherkin language to write test scripts in natural language format, while Selenium is more focused on web application testing and supports multiple programming languages such as Java, Python, and C# for writing test scripts.

  2. Testing Scope: Another difference is that Cucumber is more suitable for acceptance testing and collaboration between non-technical and technical team members to define application behavior, whereas Selenium is more focused on functional and regression testing of web applications at the UI level.

  3. User Involvement: Cucumber encourages active involvement of non-technical stakeholders in the testing process by allowing them to write feature files in plain text using Gherkin syntax, while Selenium requires testers to have strong programming skills to write automation scripts and perform test automation.

  4. Integration: Cucumber can be integrated with various testing frameworks and tools such as JUnit and TestNG to execute test scenarios, while Selenium can be integrated with tools like Maven, Jenkins, and Docker for continuous integration and deployment of test automation.

  5. Reporting and Collaboration: Cucumber provides detailed and readable reports for test results, including failed scenarios with descriptive error messages, which can be shared easily with team members for collaboration and analysis, while Selenium requires additional plugins or libraries for generating comprehensive test reports.

  6. Browser Support: Selenium supports various web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari for cross-browser testing, ensuring that web applications are compatible across different platforms, whereas Cucumber focuses more on testing application behavior and may not offer extensive browser support out of the box.

In Summary, Cucumber and Selenium differ in terms of programming language focus, testing scope, user involvement, integration capabilities, reporting features, and browser support.

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Advice on Selenium, Cucumber

Shivam
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 ............................ ............................ .............................

241k views241k
Comments
Abigail
Abigail

Dec 6, 2019

Decided

As bioinformaticists, we regularly get asked to develop apps or websites which are HIPAA compliant, connect to an EHR, or are ready for FDA regulation.

Regarding the last, the FDA has built up best practices over the past 40 or 50 years regarding "validation and verification" testing. Without going into a lengthy history of FDA regulations, suffice it to say that there are two important distinctions about validation and verification testing - the first of which is that there has to be more than one testing methodology, so that manufacturers or developers don't get a sort of biased tunnel vision; and the second is that at least one of the testing methodologies has to be user-centric. So, it's not enough to test the engine of a car, a manufacturer also must have crash test dummies.

In the world of software written for hospitals and clinical environments, we interpret the verification and validation testing requirements in terms of requiring more than one testing framework, one of which is an end-to-end testing harness using a technology like Selenium. It's not enough to have unit testing, but we also need e2e acceptance testing. Selenium has traditionally been the only game in town, and has been a struggle to work with at times. But it's a tank, and keeps on rolling. We particularly like recent incarnations using Chromedriver and WebDriver protocols, which is slowly reducing the reliance on the legacy Java server.

6.88k views6.88k
Comments
Abigail
Abigail

Dec 10, 2019

Decided

We use Selenium for our FDA validation testing.

For those not familiar with FDA and NASA quality control initiatives and testing requirements, suffice it to say that the federal government tends to talk in terms of 'validation and verification testing' in many of its' regulations. There's decades of history behind this term, and the three important takeaways are the following:

First, a project has to have two or more testing strategies, so as not to fall into a bias with a single testing strategy. Second, one of those testing strategies has to be user-centric, commonly known as validation testing. Examples include crash test dummies and end-to-end software acceptance tests. Third, most any other testing strategy can qualify as verification testing.

So, we use Selenium for our FDA validation testing, because it simulates a user walking through the software.

It's big and bloated and slow, and the legacy version runs on Java, and it's brittle and doubles the amount of code we have to write, and is otherwise a total pain in the ass. But it's like folding your parachute before skydiving or having a depth gauge when SCUBA diving or placing bolts when climbing a wall. There are simply some tasks that you don't want to do without safety gear.

And for all its' pain to use, Selenium is like safety gear for building your tech stack. We've migrated across a half a dozen user interfaces, two entirely different back-end languages, three or four data protocols, and countless utilities over the years. And Selenium warns us when we're in danger and it catches us when we fall.

7.08k views7.08k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Selenium
Selenium
Cucumber
Cucumber

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.

Cucumber is a tool that supports Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) - a software development process that aims to enhance software quality and reduce maintenance costs.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
33.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
8.6K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
16.2K
Stacks
1.4K
Followers
12.6K
Followers
927
Votes
527
Votes
36
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
Pros
  • 20
    Simple Syntax
  • 8
    Simple usage
  • 5
    Huge community
  • 3
    Nice report

What are some alternatives to Selenium, Cucumber?

BrowserStack

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

Sauce Labs

Cloud-based automated testing platform enables developers and QEs to perform functional, JavaScript unit, and manual tests with Selenium or Appium on web and mobile apps. Videos and screenshots for easy debugging. Secure and CI-ready.

LambdaTest

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

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.

Robot Framework

Robot Framework

It is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development. It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax and it utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Playwright

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 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

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.

TestCafe

TestCafe

It is a pure node.js end-to-end solution for testing web apps. It takes care of all the stages: starting browsers, running tests, gathering test results and generating reports.

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