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Cypress E2E Tests

· 2 min read
Jiaqi Liu
info

This action assumes the yarn package manager is used.

Cypress E2E action offers an easy way to automate, customize, and execute parallel end-to-end tests. The action provides

  • dependency installation via yarn,
  • scanning of test specs,
  • running each spec in parallel, and
  • upload test screenshots and video on test failure.

The example below is a very simple setup:

  1. Install Cypress with yarn add cypress --dev

  2. Initialize Cypress with yarn run cypress open

  3. Support TypeScript

  4. Put all .spec.cy.ts test files under "cypress/e2e" directory

  5. Install wait-on: yarn add -D wait-on

  6. Add the following script command to package.json:

    {
      ...

      "scripts": {
        "e2e": "cypress run --browser chrome",
        "wait-on-dev": "wait-on http-get://localhost:3000/",
        "wait-on-prod": "wait-on http-get://localhost:3000/"
      },

      ...
    }
    info

    Note that we assume the UI is running at port 3000. Please adjust it accordingly if it's running at a different port.

  7. Use Cypress E2E Tests workflow:

    ---
    name: CI/CD

    "on":
      pull_request:
      push:
        branches:
          - master

      e2e-tests:
        name: Unit Tests
        needs: unit-tests
        uses: QubitPi/hashicorp-aws/.github/workflows/cypress-e2e.yml@master

    In the example above, the node 18 is used in the CI/CDed project by default. A list of custom node versions can be used to replace the default. For example, to run E2E tests in node 16, 18, and 20, simply use node-versions parameter:

    ---
      e2e-tests:
        name: Unit Tests
        needs: unit-tests
        uses: QubitPi/hashicorp-aws/.github/workflows/cypress-e2e.yml@master
        with:
          node-versions: '["16", "18", "20"]'
tip

Inside the cypress-e2e workflow, each [Cypress spec] is tested in 2 modes:

  1. yarn-start: the web app is started using yarn start
  2. server: a production build is generated first using yarn build and then the web app is started with yarn serve

The reason we run the same E2E in 2 separate modes is that we assume E2E testing consists of 2 logical parts:

  1. The logical tests defined by Cypress spec files
  2. The same tests in the context of integration of web app logic and the production runtime github-actions-core

The app may work perfectly fine in E2E, but it's a different question when the same app is packaged up using, for example, webpack. The later could also be interpreted as integration tests against webpack configuration which makes the tests more comprehensive