Angular Scenario Runner vs Protractor

Question

Am I correct in saying that Protractor must have the Protractor/Selenium Webdriver installed on the machine where the tests are being run but Angular Scenario runner executes within the browser?

I would essentially love to be able to run tests/scenarios remotely to give potential interviewers an insight into the behaviour/nature of a site I am developing.

I have used iMacros in the past, however, the tests weren't strictly portable between Firefox and Chrome?

Is my assumption about the difference between Protractor and Angular Scenario runner correct?

Thanks, Mark.

Answer 1

Am I correct in saying that Protractor must have the Protractor/Selenium Webdriver installed on the machine where the tests are being run but Angular Scenario runner executes within the browser?

If you are using NPM then you can have Protractor/Selenium Webdriver as local dependencies. They don't have to be installed globally. See https://github.com/angular/protractor.

I would essentially love to be able to run tests/scenarios remotely to give potential interviewers an insight into the behaviour/nature of a site I am developing.

Do you mean a live demo of the site using protractor or something like that to show the workflows and usecases? If so then you might be over engineering the solution. A Youtube video would have the same effect.

I have used iMacros in the past, however, the tests weren't strictly portable between Firefox and Chrome?

Protractor tests are portable, you just need the correct webdrivers and make sure to point to the browser binaries.

Is my assumption about the difference between Protractor and Angular Scenario runner correct?

I cannot answer this. I don't know enough about Angular Scenario Runner.

I would advise against it though as it is depreciated, see note at top of page https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/e2e-testing.

Answer 2

Protractor wraps the WebDriverJS - javascript selenium bindings, and adds quite a lot on top of it, specifically to testing Angular sites but not necessarily. When you run Protractor, you need your application to be served and accessible, you may need to start the selenium server or use the direct connect feature available for Firefox and Chrome, see also:

• Difference running Protractor with/without Selenium?
• Protractor: How it works?

Angular Scenario runner on the other hand is something you should not be considering - it is currently deprecated and is in the maintenance mode.