Gaining Confidence with Cypress Tests

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Have you ever wanted to refactor mercilessly but didn't want to break the fragile tower? Or have you ever pushed to production only to spend the next few days cleaning up the regressions? You need end-to-end tests, and Cypress is a great, fast way to build them. With a simple JavaScript or TypeScript interface, you can automate browsers to hit those critical functions in your app to prove it works as expected -- this time and every time. Join us to dive into building Cypress tests and leave with confidence to refactor your way to greatness.

This talk has been presented at React Advanced Conference 2021, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

You can find the slides for Rob Richardson's talk on gaining confidence with Cypress tests on his website, RobRich.org. Simply click on the Presentations link at the top.

AZ Give Camp is an event where volunteer developers come together with charities to build free software. It starts on a Friday after work and ends on Sunday afternoon with the delivery of the completed software. If you're in Phoenix, you can join the next AZ Give Camp. If you want a Give Camp in your area, contact Rob Richardson via email or Twitter.

Rob Richardson is a SIRL developer advocate, Microsoft MVP, Docker captain, and a friend of RedGate. He was also a core contributor to Gulp in versions 2 and 3 and has participated in the .NET Rocks podcast.

Cypress is a browser plugin built on top of Mocha and Chai that allows for browser-based functional and end-to-end testing. Unlike Selenium, which is known for making slow and brittle tests, Cypress can wait for the DOM to be ready or for API calls to be done, making tests faster and more reliable. Cypress tests can only be written in JavaScript, but it allows for taking videos and screenshots during test runs.

To get started with Cypress, you need to install it using npm. Run 'npm install cypress' and then 'npx cypress open' to scaffold out the necessary content. Cypress will automatically discover all the browsers installed on your machine and come with an Electron browser.

For end-to-end testing, you can use frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, TestCafe, and Playwright. Each has its own pros and cons; for example, Selenium is known for slow and brittle tests while Cypress is more reliable but only supports JavaScript.

The best practice for writing Cypress selectors is to create specific selectors that identify an ID or class. An even better approach is to use a 'data-cy' attribute on your elements and then use 'cy.get("data-cy=element")' in your tests. This ensures that your tests remain robust even if the page layout changes.

Yes, Cypress tests can be written in TypeScript. You need to create a TypeScript configuration file (tsconfig.json) and specify the necessary overrides for Cypress. This allows you to write tests in TypeScript instead of JavaScript.

You can run Cypress tests in different browsers by specifying the browser in your test scripts. For example, you can configure your package.json to run tests in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge by using commands like 'npm run cy:open' and 'npm run cy:run'.

For unit testing, tools like Mocha, Chai, Jest, and Jasmine are mentioned. To validate these tests, you can use Karma, which runs unit tests inside a browser.

Rob Richardson
Rob Richardson
23 min
25 Oct, 2021

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Video Summary and Transcription

Welcome to React Advanced London where we'll learn about gaining confidence with Cypress tests. We'll explore browser testing, including tests for specific units of work, business services, APIs, and components using different tools. Cypress provides selectors for easy object selection in tests. We learned how to select objects in our tests and rerun them to check for successes and failures. We also discussed best practices for Cypress tests, including using data-cy elements, commands, mocks, and fixtures.

1. Introduction to Cypress Tests

Short description:

Welcome to React Advanced London. We'll learn about gaining confidence with Cypress tests. I'll post the slides on my site tonight. Check out RobRich.org for more information. I'm a SIRL developer advocate, Microsoft MVP, Docker captain, and friend of RedGate. AZ Give Camp is a fun event where we build free software for charities. Join us for the next AZ Give Camp or contact me for a gift camp in your area. I've contributed to Gulp and was featured on a .NET Rocks podcast.

Welcome to React Advanced London. I'm Rob Richardson, and we're going to learn about gaining confidence with Cypress tests.

Here's the part where I tell you I'm definitely going to post the slides on my site tonight. I've been that person chasing the speaker, and it's never worked out very well for me, either, which is why you can head to RobRich.org right now, click on Presentations here at the top, and here's gaining confidence with Cypress tests. The slides and the code are available online.

While we're here at RobRich.org, let's click on About Me and we'll see some of the things that I've done recently. I'm a SIRL developer advocate. If you're having trouble taming your data mesh, let's chat. I'm also a Microsoft MVP, a Docker captain, a friend of RedGate, and AZ Give Camp is really fun. AZ Give Camp brings volunteer developers together with charities to build free software. We start Friday after work. Sunday afternoon, we deliver the completed software to the charities. Sleep is optional, caffeine provided. If you're in Phoenix, come join us for the next AZ Give Camp, or if you'd like a gift camp here in London, or wherever you're connecting from, hit me up on email or Twitter, and let's get a gift camp in your neighborhood too. Some of the other things that I've done. I was a core contributor to Gulp in version two and version three, and I replied to a .NET Rocks podcast episode. They read my comment on the air and they sent me a mug. Woo-hoo. So there's my claim to fame, my coveted .NET Rocks mug.

2. Gaining Confidence with Cypress Tess

Short description:

Let's dig in with gaining confidence with Cypress Tess. We'll start with a TypeScript build and then execute our tests. Cypress is an electron app and a browser plugin built on top of Mocha and Chai. We'll explore browser testing, including tests for specific units of work, business services, APIs, and components using different tools.

So let's dig in with gaining confidence with Cypress Tess. Now, I'm not quite sure how this talk is going to go, so let me fire up this thing and let's see if my site is ready. Now, our first step is to do a TypeScript build. So let's kick that off. Once we've got our TypeScript build, then we'll start executing each of our tests.

Looks good so far. It's working pretty well. Yep. It looks like this test is going to work out pretty well. Yep, my site is functioning well. That's great. That's awesome. It looks like my site will work and this talk will turn out just fine.

We saw browser-based functional testing in Cypress. That was pretty cool. Or said differently, we saw end-to-end tests. Cypress is that mechanism for running experiences much like a user would. It's an electron app and a browser plugin. And it's built on top of Mocha and Chai. Like many good stories, we started in the middle. Let's back up and start at the beginning. Let's talk about browser testing.

As I'm doing browser testing, I'll probably create tests in each of these categories. I might have tests around a specific unit of work, a specific business service. Or I might test an API. Maybe it's GraphQL or GRPC or REST. I might test this service. Now, that's not a web service, but rather a business service, and I might want to test that service running in a particular browser. I might want to test components where I'm still doing unit tests, so I may be mocking child components, and for each of these, I might use different tools. If I want to test a small unit of work, I would use mocha, Chai, Jest, or Jasmine.

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