Maestro & Expo: Crafting the Future of Efficient e2e Testing

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If you’ve never heard of Maestro, I will show you why I think it's the best e2e testing tool.

And if you have, I will share some tips for an effective integration into your workflow.

This is an educational talk on Maestro where I’ll cover when, what & how to test. I often see people re-building for each run. So I’ll also dig into some Expo specificities (such as eas update & build:list) that will enable you to optimize time and cost and achieve a state-of-the-art CI/CD with Maestro.

This talk has been presented at React Advanced 2024, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

End-to-end testing examines an app in its entirety, similar to a test drive of a high-performance sports car, to catch bugs that unit or interaction tests might miss.

End-to-end tests are complex to set up and can be unreliable. They require building the app, starting simulators, ensuring the right environment, and can be slow and expensive to run regularly.

The tools mentioned are Appium, Detox, and Maestro. Appium is powerful but complex, Detox is simpler but less powerful, and Maestro offers a balance with ease of use and community support.

Maestro is simple to install, has a supportive community, and provides tools like Maestro Studio for building tests and Maestro Cloud for running tests on cloud servers.

Maestro Cloud allows you to run tests on their servers, managing simulators and builds for you, and provides auto-retry and video recordings of failed tests.

Expo is a set of tools that helps iterate quicker by using custom development builds and EAS (Expo Application Services), allowing for efficient building and sharing of apps without rebuilding on each CI/CD pipeline.

EAS allows the creation and sharing of builds without rebuilding the app for each pipeline, making the process faster, cheaper, and simpler.

Maestro does not support iOS devices yet, only simulators, and there is no device farm support. Tests are written in YAML, which is not type-safe or standard, and there's a limit of 100 free tests per month.

Tests in Maestro can be tagged to run based on specific triggers, such as every pull request, weekly, or before deploying an update, allowing for a tailored testing strategy.

After the 100 free tests per month, the cost is 10 cents per test. There is also an option to self-host to reduce costs.

Mathieu Fedrigo
Mathieu Fedrigo
20 min
28 Oct, 2024

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Video Summary and Transcription
End-to-end testing is important for catching hard-to-find bugs, but it can be complex and time-consuming. The speaker shares their journey at YOLO apps and how they addressed these issues using Maestro, a newer testing tool. Maestro allows interaction with all aspects of the app and offers a web interface for building tests. It also provides features like auto retry and test videos for troubleshooting. The speaker also discusses automating CI/CD using Expo and EAS, which simplified the app build and distribution process. They demonstrate how EAS and MySQL Cloud can be used for reporting and investigation. The power of end-to-end testing is showcased, with a fast CI/CD time and free tests and EAS updates. Maestro has some limitations, but it offers easy test writing and 100 free tests per month, with additional tests available at a cost.
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