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Add to SafariWhen comparing Zombie.js vs CasperJS, the Slant community recommends CasperJS for most people. In the question“What are the best automated browser testing frameworks?” CasperJS is ranked 7th while Zombie.js is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose CasperJS is:
There are times where you don't want to open up a browser for screencaps, that is where CasperJS comes to use, it can render the page using its own rendering engine and take and save a screenshot for you, all via the commandline
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Runs on Node.js
Zombie is built on node.js, making it very easy to integrate with your project and into your testing toolchain. It only requires JavaScript to run.
Pro Fully featured api based interaction and assertion
The way the api is built makes it very easy to add to your test framework.
Pro Claims to be "Insanely Fast"
It's a lot faster than fully fletched browsers and a lot lighter. Partly because it really only focuses on headless loading of pages along with their JavaScript (not taking really care of rendering or more visual resources).
Pro Allows screenshots (either the full page or parts of it) if performing UI testing
There are times where you don't want to open up a browser for screencaps, that is where CasperJS comes to use, it can render the page using its own rendering engine and take and save a screenshot for you, all via the commandline
Pro Easy to understand
Pro Written in JavaScript
Since all webdevs know JS, the start-up time of learning the framework will be reduced to zero, as your team can be productive from day one.
Pro Easily integrates with other applications
Due to the simplicity of the framework, not only other libraries can be built with it, but it can be integrated with any web application as well.
Pro Can run javascript code inside pages being tested
Can execute arbitrary javascript or load external JS into the page being tested. This feature is possible due to the presence of a rendering engine, and helps you see the effects of any client side scripting during your tests.
Cons
Con Support has waned
As of August 19, 2016, Zombie hasn't received a commit since January 2016. Issues get comments like "patch welcome".
Con Stale documentation
Full API documentation has been missing since the start, making it frustrating to use.
Con Fails to load many sites
As its JavaScript and DOM engine are mostly "just good enough" and because by design it'll report all errors and stop there, many complex sites will not load properly through Zombie.js.
Con No screen-shot
As it doesn't render the page, you cannot get a screenshot to for testing or reporting test failures.
Con Not for unit testing but rather UI testing
These are two extremely different concepts. CasperJS should be removed from this list
Con Cannot guarantee 100% accurate Webkit-based browser screenshots
QtWebKit is the rendering engine used by CasperJS. Keep in mind this is NOT the same rendering engine as Chrome; hence, if you want to be 100% sure of the results, you must run a Webkit browser (such as Chrome) yourself.
