what browser does zombie.js use?

Question

So I came across zombie.js, is this a headless browser?

If so, what browser engine does it use?

Could I rely on it for doing lot of automated tests? Basically, I am restricted to a single server, so I would like to squeeze as many browser tests as possible.

Currently, I am relying on Selenium FirefoxDriver to run my tests. How would zombie.js compare in performance and efficiency to Selenium Webdriver browser instances running? However, there's limitation to how many browser instances I can run in parallel.

Crock

Why don't you run tests with HtmlUnitDriver ? – Circumjacent

have can you put up with htmlunitdriver's javascript handling? Its not accurate for ajax, js heavy web apps. – Crock

Answer 1

Yes, Zombie is headless.

"Whick browser engine?" - > well, it uses a mixture of technologies:

• for Javascript: V8 from Chrome (run by node.js)
• for DOM: JSDOM
• for HTML5 parsing: https://github.com/aredridel/html5

Performance: should be much faster, according to author's statement: http://labnotes.org/2010/12/30/zombie-js-insanely-fast-full-stack-headless-testing/

Caesura

last time I checked it still had some problems parsing JS....if those things get sorted out then god damn....we open a new era to functional testing....cheaper and faster and lighter. – Crock

Answer 2

is this a headless browser?

I haven't used it, but it certainly looks like a headless browser:

If you're going to write an insanely fast, headless browser, how can you not call it Zombie? Zombie it is.

Zombie.js is a lightweight framework for testing client-side JavaScript code in a simulated environment. No browser required.

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what browser engine does it use?

From http://zombie.labnotes.org/guts.html#Grocking:

The DOM implementation is JSDOM, which provides an emulation of DOM Level 3.

Inanity

so does firefox implement a different level dom? – Crock

That would depend on the version of Firefox - but in general, no, since DOM Level 3 is the current/latest iteration of the DOM spec. Since Zombie.js also supports HTML5 (through this library), it looks like it has fairly solid support for the newest web technologies. – Inanity

Wow....zombie.js just seems to good to be true. Of course, I will have to see for myself but if this can replace my current XVNC + HUDSON CI + FIREFOX + WEBDRIVER mix, it would save me lot of time and money. – Crock

I can't even install Zombie....some reports of pages not loading at all...this sounds awfully like HTMLUnit but better but not quite accurate as driving the actual browser via Selenium – Crock

That's about right, Kim Jong Woo. (I'm the author of the html parsing portion) – Ormolu

jsdom is missing enough things (crypto, indexedb) that i've really never been able to use zombie.... but i did try to use it, and it works great – Intermixture