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Underscore.js VS Phantomjs

Compare Underscore.js VS Phantomjs and see what are their differences

Underscore.js logo Underscore.js

Underscore is a utility-belt library for JavaScript that provides a lot of the functional...

Phantomjs logo Phantomjs

PhantomJS is a headless browser that works hand in hand with Selenium to help developers more efficiently test their sites and apps.
  • Underscore.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-12-17
  • Phantomjs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-29

Underscore.js features and specs

  • Utility Functions
    Underscore.js provides a wealth of utility functions for common tasks such as map, reduce, filter, and more, making it easier to perform operations on arrays, objects, and collections.
  • Consistency
    The library offers a consistent API, which can make your code more readable and maintainable by providing a standard way to perform common programming tasks.
  • Lightweight
    Underscore.js is lightweight compared to full-featured libraries like Lodash, which can be a benefit if you're looking to minimize your application's footprint.
  • Browser Compatibility
    It supports a wide range of JavaScript environments, making it a good choice for projects that need to work across different browsers and Node.js.
  • Quick to Learn
    Easy to pick up for developers with even a basic understanding of JavaScript, due to its straightforward documentation and familiar function names.

Possible disadvantages of Underscore.js

  • Performance
    Underscore.js may not offer the same level of performance optimizations as more modern utility libraries like Lodash, potentially leading to slower execution for some tasks.
  • Limited Functionality
    While it covers many basic utility functions, its feature set is not as extensive as Lodash or other similar libraries, which provide a broader range of capabilities.
  • Outdated
    With the advent of ECMAScript 5 and later versions, many of the functions provided by Underscore.js are now natively available in JavaScript, reducing its necessity.
  • No Modularization
    Underscore does not support modular builds in the same way Lodash does, meaning you might end up including the entire library even if you only need a few functions.
  • Community and Maintenance
    While still maintained, Underscore.js has seen less active development and contributions compared to newer libraries, which could impact its long-term viability and support.

Phantomjs features and specs

  • Headless Execution
    PhantomJS can run scripts without the need for a graphical user interface, making it ideal for automation tasks such as web scraping and automated testing, especially in CI environments.
  • Full Web Stack
    It fully supports a range of web standards like DOM, CSS, JavaScript, and even SVG. This makes it highly versatile for different types of web interactions and manipulations.
  • Screenshots
    PhantomJS allows for easy capturing of web content as screenshots, which is useful for visual testing, performance analysis, and content verification.
  • Network Monitoring
    The tool offers capabilities for monitoring network traffic and performance, enabling developers to gather insights on resource loading times, HTTP status codes, and other networking metrics.
  • Simplicity
    PhantomJS provides a straightforward API, making it relatively easy to use and integrate into development and testing workflows even for developers with limited experience in scripting.

Possible disadvantages of Phantomjs

  • Deprecated
    Active development of PhantomJS has been discontinued. This means no new features, improvements, or security updates will be released, which can pose significant risk for long-term projects.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running headless browsers can still be resource-intensive. PhantomJS may consume considerable CPU and memory, which could become a bottleneck in high-performance environments.
  • Limited Modern Web Compatibility
    As the web evolves, new standards and features are introduced. Being discontinued, PhantomJS may lack support for the latest web technologies, potentially leading to rendering discrepancies or failures.
  • Difficulty in Debugging
    Debugging headless browser scripts can be more challenging compared to using full browsers with developer tools, making it harder to resolve complex issues that arise.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    While the API is straightforward, mastering PhantomJS scripting and effectively dealing with asynchronous JavaScript operations and browser-specific quirks can be difficult for beginners.

Underscore.js videos

Introduction to Underscore.JS

Phantomjs videos

How to use PhantomJS with Selenium?

More videos:

  • Review - DrupalCon Portland 2013: AUTOMATED TESTING WITH JASMINE AND PHANTOMJS

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Underscore.js and Phantomjs)
Javascript UI Libraries
71 71%
29% 29
Development Tools
68 68%
32% 32
Libraries And Widgets
67 67%
33% 33
JavaScript Framework
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Underscore.js and Phantomjs

Underscore.js Reviews

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Phantomjs Reviews

Top 10 Best Selenium Alternatives You Should Try
PhantomJS is an open-source, scriptable headless browser intended for automating webpage collaboration. It is also a powerful testing tool that supports various web standards and makes it appropriate for automation and integration with CI tools.
6 Popular Headless Browsers for Web Testing
Complexity is commonplace in the modern internet landscape, and PhantomJS is built to handle it all using basic command line testing. This headless WebKit is scriptable via the JavaScript API and uses CasperJS to handle testing. Capable of simulating “full navigation scenarios,” PhantomJS can reveal all the places where a user may encounter errors while browsing.
Source: www.keycdn.com
Introduction to Headless Browser Testing
PhantomJS supports headless testing with the use of CasperJS. CasperJS is a navigation scripting & testing tool for PhantomJS. It allows you to build full navigation scenarios using high-level functions and a straight forward interface to accomplish all sizes of tasks.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Underscore.js should be more popular than Phantomjs. It has been mentiond 23 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Underscore.js mentions (23)

  • JavaScript evolution: From Lodash and Underscore to vanilla
    Underscore was created by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone.js) in 2009 to provide a set of utility functions that JavaScript lacked at the time. It was also created to work with Backbone.js, but it slowly became a favorite among developers who needed utility functions that they could just call and get stuff done with without having to worry about the inner implementations and browser compatibility. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • KlongPy: High-Performance Array Programming in Python
    There was a step-change improvement for me when I tried expressing some JS patterns via `underscore.js` instead of procedurally: eg: http://underscorejs.org/#each Thinking of something as `each | map | filter | sum` is waaay less buggy than writing bespoke procedural code to do the same thing. No doubt there is a "cost" to it as well, but the _abstraction_ is valuable. Now, if there were a "compiler" which could... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • 100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
    Underscore.js: A utility library that offers a full set of functional programming helpers without extending any built-in JavaScript objects. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Mastering Node.js
    Underscore contains just about every core utility method you want. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • 8 NPM Packages for JavaScript Beginners [2024][+tutorials]
    Not too far behind is Underscore.js, another utility library that's all about enhancing your JavaScript mojo. Whether you're dealing with arrays, objects, or strings, Underscore has got something for you. It's like Lodash's sibling, offering similar functionalities but with its own flair. The choice between them is like picking between chocolate and vanilla - it really comes down to personal taste. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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Phantomjs mentions (11)

  • youtube bandwidth throttled for cloud addresses?
    Install Phantomjs and see if that improves things. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How to Bypass Cloudflare in 2023: The 8 Best Methods
    Automated Browser Detection. Cloudflare queries the browser for properties that only exist in automated web browser environments. For example, the existence of the window.document.__selenium_unwrapped or window.callPhantom property indicates the usage of Selenium and PhantomJS, respectively. For obvious reasons, you're getting blocked if this is detected. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: What's the best way to get all the HTML from a JavaScript site?
    I know there is https://phantomjs.org/ but is there something else people use these days? The issue is some websites curl works fine to get all the rendered html, but some you don't get any content without a javascript engine. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Detecting PhantomJS headless browsers
    Despite the popularity of Puppeteer and Headless Chrome, my team of threat researchers and I wondered, to what extent PhantomJS was still being used by bot developers. In this post, we share how we identified traffic associated with PhantomJS, the types of attacks performed, and its use in comparison to Puppeteer Extra Stealth. Source: over 2 years ago
  • How to make a SPA SEO crawlable?
    I've been working on how to make a SPA crawlable by google based on google's instructions. Even though there are quite a few general explanations I couldn't find anywhere a more thorough step-by-step tutorial with actual examples. After having finished this I would like to share my solution so that others may also make use of it and possibly improve it further. I am using MVC with Webapi controllers, and... Source: almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Underscore.js and Phantomjs, you can also consider the following products

jQuery - The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

React Native - A framework for building native apps with React

Babel - Babel is a compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.

Composer - Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP.

OpenSSL - OpenSSL is a free and open source software cryptography library that implements both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, which are primarily used to provide secure communications between web browsers and …

Raven.js - Raven.js is a standalone JavaScript client for Sentry.