Selenium webdriver, open source UI tools VS testproject kind of cloud platforms

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Selenium webdriver, open source UI tools VS testproject kind of cloud platforms

When I started working for a new company, one of the first things I noticed was that they have a tendency to do UI automation with scriptless tools available on the market. The actual application to be tested is with an Angular front end (Nothing much complications I foresee on the UI except some pdf validations). Its more of a web based application with at this point no device support required(Mobile etc)

I worked with java spring boot based micro service system before joining here. We used to split the tests into three layers: Unit testing, API layer and the final collection of end-to-end scenarios on the front end along with the automated code quality scanners in the pipleine. Based on the context, we would probably choose an open source tool from this list

  • Selenium Webdriver with Java or some other client binding
  • Microsoft Playwright
  • Google puppeteer
  • Nightwatch JS and so on.

Here they are, however, attempting to promote testproject. Except the cloud solutions sauce labs and browser stack, which allows us to easily test multi-combination devices for the scripts we build in our standards, I am not at all a fan of these types of recording and playback platforms. These kinds of platforms usually come at a cost. However, testproject.io has a FREE model (which I assume is not open source) and Tricentis tells their own stories why they keep this free. The selling point of my superiors is that the people with non programming experience can use this, which I am not at all convinced. In 2021 I would definitely suggest to increase the people skill and not dive back 2010 thoughts

Is it a good idea to select these kinds of platforms as I strongly feel this recording and playback will surely become a headache going forward. Could you please share your thoughts on this?

I had raised the same in sqa.stackexchange.com where somebody suggested protractor. The reason I left Protractor is that I’m not sure how much production and maintenance is currently taking place. If I search protractor’s github, the most recent commit (the most recent master branch commit is on May 14, 2020) is at least an year old. Even though the protractor is from the angular squad, I’m not sure how much people are maintaining protractor after Pupeteer arrived on the scene. Also, I’m not sure whether Protractor is still using older selenium webdriver versions or whether they have upgraded to the new w3c webdriver protocol under the hood.

Again my question is more focused on testproject kind of recording and play back tools

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Protractor is officially being retired, so no sense in using it anymore:

I remember giving TestProject a try and I wasn’t fascinated with it, seems similar to a lot of other low-code or no-code tools out there, to be honest I don’t like using record and playback tools, I prefer coding :nerd_face:

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Record and playback tools are never my first pick, and I don’t see many automation testing companies using them.
They are not flexible as selenium and have never been easy to manage.
I find many flaws in these tools. The maintenance cost with these tools are very high.
There are always many changes in the app, which fails the the tool to playback what was recorded earlier.
Also integration is something these tools have failed in to catch up with selenium.
Selenium on the other hand has now come so far that it has enormous integrations now.
Remote execution, data and keyword driving, parallelization and Behavior driven are also the features which makes selenium versatile.

The only useful case I find with the record and playback tools is when you have a stable app with minimal scope of frequent UI enhancements.

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