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Angular's E2E Testing Framework - Why is it called Protractor?

The Angular Ecosystem

Angular is an amazing framework. It enables us to build modern web apps easily. Yes we can build a modern web app with just HTML + CSS + JavaScript, maybe with a dash of jQuery 😉 But Angular just makes it whole lot easier.

Users today's web apps to be fast, well designed, offline-capable, secure and a delightful. Since Angular is a opinionated framework, it forces you to make the right choices. Today Angular is not just a web framework. it has created its own ecosystem.

As you might have guessed, I am a Angular fanboy 😎. But one thing I'm not a fan of is writing test cases 😛 I started learning about software testing in late 2019, because I asked to setup unit + E2E testing for one of our projects. What I learned was, Angular come with Karma + Jasmine setup (for unit testing) out of the box. But it has built a specialized E2E testing framework called Protractor. But I couldn't figure out why they called it Protractor of all things. Later it dawned on me 💡 My eureka moment! The clue was hidden in the framework's name all along.

Protractor - Angular's custom E2E framework

The Mystery

In HTML we use chevrons to denotes tags. Chevrons are also called... you guessed it! Angular brackets. So that's how the framework's name came to be. Now the word angular itself is derived from the word angle. We have all been introduced to angles in our math classes. We were also taught how to measure angles using a particular tool. That's right, the tool is called protractor!

We can measure angles using a protractor. And similarly we can measure the "correctness" of our code with E2E testing. So that's why the name was chosen. Pretty smart if you ask me 💻
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Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 26, 2021 at 9:02 PM

    Very informative

    ReplyDelete
  2. debapriya.sen93August 27, 2021 at 1:59 PM

    Such a deep thought behind naming! Nicely explained. I am sure now, "google" would also not be as meaningless as it sounds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tuhin KarmakarAugust 27, 2021 at 5:40 PM

      Moral of the story: everything has a reason 🧐

      Delete

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