JavaScript testing

Since there usually are web UI implementations of nearly every product these days, the JavaScript testing frameworks deserve special mention:

• Karma is a test runner for unit tests in the JavaScript language

• Jasmine is a Cucumber-like behavior testing framework

• Protractor is used for AngularJS

Protractor is a different testing framework, similar to Selenium in scope but optimized for AngularJS, a popular JavaScript user interface framework. While it would appear that new web development frameworks come and go everyday, it's interesting to note why a test framework like Protractor exists when Selenium is available and is general enough to test AngularJS applications too.

First of all, Protractor actually uses the Selenium web driver implementation under the hood.

You can write Protractor tests in JavaScript, but you can use JavaScript for writing test cases for Selenium as well if you don't like writing them in a language like Java.

The main benefit turns out to be that Protractor...