Best Practices for Writing and Debugging Cypress Tests

Replay.IO is a project that Filip Hrits, a dev rel developer relations at Replay.IO and a Cypress ambassador, discusses during the workshop. It is described as a cool product that integrates well with the debugging process, particularly for Cypress tests. Replay.IO helps in recording and debugging applications, providing insights that go beyond traditional testing frameworks.

Currently, handling multiple tabs is not natively supported by Cypress. However, they have developed a workaround plugin that uses Puppeteer to manage multiple tabs as a temporary solution. This approach is still under evaluation to see if it meets user needs before potentially integrating it into Cypress natively.

Filip Hrits suggests using the Replay.IO tool to handle flaky tests in Cypress by recording tests and analyzing the recordings to understand and fix the root causes of the flakiness in the application code, rather than just in the tests themselves.

The workshop emphasizes understanding the application's behavior and using tools like Replay.IO to dig deeper into test failures. It also recommends using Cypress's native capabilities to time travel and debug tests, ensuring tests are not only passing but also reliable and indicative of the application's actual behavior in production.

Filip Hrits improves test reliability by using strategies like avoiding conditions in tests, ensuring tests are deterministic. For readability, he suggests using descriptive annotations within tests to make them easier to understand and debug, and employing tools like his Cypress plugin steps to visually annotate test steps in the Cypress runner.

Filip Hrits acknowledges that Playwright is catching up with Cypress in terms of features and might surpass it. However, he advises that if a project has a significant number of tests already in Cypress, migrating might not be beneficial solely for feature parity, especially if the existing tests are stable and well-maintained.