Introduction to Cypress

G C Reddy

2 years ago

Introduction to Cypress, What is Cypress tool, download & install Cyprus tool, Cypress tool vs. Selenium, Advantages & Dis advantages of Cypress test tool.

Selenium Online Training with Project (by GC Reddy)

Introduction to Cypress

What is Cypress?

Cypress is a JavaScript-based front-end testing tool, which is written in Node Js. Cypress executes tests within the browser and makes the testing process easier and more reliable.

Cypress is similar to Selenium WebDriver that lets you easily write powerful and flexible tests for your web applications. It enables advanced testing options for both unit tests and integration tests.

Cypress can test anything that run on a web browser, it uses JavaScript to write tests but 90% of it’s coding can be done using Cypress inbuilt commands, which are easy to understand.

We can also use TypeScript with Cyprus to write tests, however, it is primarily written in JavaScript.

Cyprus does not use Selenium, you may have seen a lot of UI web browser automation tools that use Selenium at the back end, but that is not the case with Cyprus.

Cypress can interact with the browser directly. So it is very fast. We have a Cypress dashboard and test runner.

Operating System Support:

Cypress is a desktop application that is installed on your computer. The desktop application supports these operating systems:

macOS 10.9 and above
Linux Ubuntu 12.04 and above
Windows 7 and above (64-bit only)

Note: If you’re using npm to install Cypress, it supports:

Node.js 12 or 14 and above

Cypress Supported Browsers:

When Cypress is initially launched, you can choose to test your application using number of browsers including:

Chrome
Chromium
Edge
Electron
Firefox

Cypress automatically detects available browsers on your OS.

How is Cypress different from Selenium?

Cypress and Selenium are test automation tools used for functional testing of web applications by automating browser actions. Selenium has been a widely-used tool for years, whereas Cypress is a recently introduced tool in the test community.

Selenium requires the installation of browser drivers so that the script can interact with the web elements on the page. However, installing Cypress does not have any additional dependencies, extra downloads since the test cases run directly inside the browser.
Selenium is purely a test automation tool, whereas both developers and QA engineers use Cypress. It is widely used for front-end development.
Configuration is difficult in Selenium however Cypress comes with ready to use framework.
Cypress Supports only JavaScript/Typescript languages while Selenium supports various programming languages like Java, Python, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and Kotlin.
Selenium supports all major browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox Micro Soft Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari while Cypress support only Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
Like Selenium and other test automation frameworks, Cypress can also be integrated with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, Circle CI, Bitbucket, GitLab, and more.

How to Install Cypress?

One needs to have Node.js preinstalled in their systems as Cypress is a Node-based application. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment.

The Node.js installation also covers the installation of npm (Node package manager).

How to Install Cypress?

There are two ways to install Cypress:

1. Using NPM

To install Cypress using the npm (Node package manager) navigate to the project directory and execute the following command:

npm init

The command above creates the package.json file. Just provide fundamental details like – package name, description, keywords, and author name.

Once done, run the command below to install Cypress.

npm install cypress --save-dev

The command above installs Cypress locally as a dev dependency for the particular project.

How to use Cypress:

Steps:

1. Setup Tests
2. Write Tests
3. Run Tests
3. Debug Tests

What are the Advantages of Cypress?

There are multiple unique factors, which makes Cypress one of the quickly adaptable choices for web automation. A few of them are:

Time Travel: Cypress takes snapshots as you turn your tests, which you can view by simply hovering over commands in Command Log to see exactly what is happening in each step
Debuggability: You don’t have to guess why your tests are failing, as cypress gives you readable errors and stack trees, which make debugging lightning fast.
Screenshots and Videos: You can view screenshots that cypress takes automatically on failure. You can also make a video of your entire test suite when running from CLI.
Automatic Waiting: With Cypress, you don’t need to add waits or sleeps in your tests. Cypress automatically waits for the commands and assertions before moving on to the next step. This saves you from asynchronous hell as well.