When comparing WebdriverIO vs Zombie.js, the Slant community recommends WebdriverIO for most people. In the question“What are the best automated browser testing frameworks?” WebdriverIO is ranked 5th while Zombie.js is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose WebdriverIO is:
WebdriverIO lets you use your favorite testing framework (Jasmine, Mocha, Cucumber) and assertion library (Chai for Mocha). Other projects implement their own testing and assertion APIs, for example [Nightwatch](http://nightwatchjs.org/api), [Intern](https://theintern.github.io/intern/#writing-functional-test). It should be mentioned though that v4.2.16 has an incompatibility with at least [tap](http://www.node-tap.org/) v7.1.2: stdout/stderr written during a run gets lost.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Works with any testing framework or assertion library
WebdriverIO lets you use your favorite testing framework (Jasmine, Mocha, Cucumber) and assertion library (Chai for Mocha). Other projects implement their own testing and assertion APIs, for example Nightwatch, Intern.
It should be mentioned though that v4.2.16 has an incompatibility with at least tap v7.1.2: stdout/stderr written during a run gets lost.
Pro Used by Chimp.js
Chimp.js, is an emerging web application test framework that implements easy sync tests using WebdriverIO, CucumberJS and Chai. Features include:
- synchronous style
- built-in "widget framework" (an implementation of the PageObject pattern)
- automatically downloads dependencies (ChromeDriver, PhantomJS etc.)
- works with SauceLabs and BrowserStack (CrossBrowserTesting TBD)
- automatically takes screenshots on failures
- works on Windows in addition to Linux and OS X
- automatically produces boilerplate code for step definitions, which you can copy, paste and edit
- file watcher reuses the browser sessions and can run only the tests you tag, to maximize development speed
Pro Excellent API documentation
Pro Synchronous implementation of asynchronous browser commands
So you don't need to worry about promises
Pro Config file generation wizard
Run wdio config
and WebdriverIO will generate a config file for testing locally vs. in the cloud, specifying the test framework (Jasmine, Cucumber, Mocha), where to find tests and store screenshots etc.
Pro Allows you to do visual regression tests using WebdriverCSS
WebdriverIO has a plugin called WebdriverCSS that allows you to do cross visual platfrom/browser tests with an integration to Applitools.
Pro Provides plugins for gulp, grunt and other
WebdriverIO is accessible via gulp and grunt and even has a Sublime Text plugin for autocompletion.
Pro Simpler syntax than selenium-webdriverjs and WD.js
selenium-webdriverjs:
driver.get('http://www.google.com');
driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id('q')).sendKeys('webdriver');
driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id('btnG')).click();
WD.js:
browser
.get("http://www.google.com")
.elementById('q')
.sendKeys('webdriver')
.elementById('btnG')
.click()
WebdriverIO:
client
.url('http://google.com')
.setValue('#q','webdriver')
.click('#btnG')
Pro Used by Meteor's Velocity test runner
If you develop web applications with Meteor.js, you might want to use the xlovio:webdriver wrapper, because it's the Selenium binding behind the preferred testing framework (Chimp) promoted by the Velocity (Meteor's official testing framework) team for using BDD via Cucumber.
Pro Selenium Server need not be started independently
Service is provided by WebdriverIO which over comes the con of starting selenium server independently.
Reference: http://webdriver.io/guide/services/selenium-standalone.html
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).
Cons
Con Must run with WDIO to debug
Tasks written in this beautiful Selenium API can only be debugged using the provided WDIO task runner. You can't set breakpoints within tasks, but you can have WDIO pause the run between Selenium commands.
Con Selenium server must be started independently
selenium-webdriverjs starts the Selenium server automatically, and actually manages to achieve a faster startup time (4 seconds vs. 5.5) than WebdriverIO.
Con Have no docs for latest version (4.0.5)
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.