Supercharge Your Testing: Unleashing the Power of Cypress with 'CypressCookiesCutter'

Author: Tayyab Saleem

In the world of web development, testing is crucial for ensuring the functionality and reliability of your applications. Because of its simplicity, power, and ease of use, Cypress has become a popular choice among the many testing tools available.

But configuring Cypress for your projects might occasionally be a difficult undertaking. "CypressCookiesCutter" is useful in this situation. We'll go over the idea behind "CypressCookiesCutter”, its advantages, and how you can use it to improve the efficiency of your testing process.

"CypressCookiesCutter” refers to a pre-configured setup for Cypress testing that includes commonly used configurations, plugins, and best practices. Essentially, it provides a foundation that you can build upon for your specific testing needs. Rather than starting from scratch every time you create a new Cypress project, you can leverage a "CypressCookiesCutter" to jumpstart your testing efforts.

Curious Benefits

1. Time-saving: Setting up Cypress from scratch can be time-consuming, especially if you're new to the tool. With a "CypressCookiesCutter", you can skip the setup process and get straight to writing tests.

2. Consistency: By using a standardized "CypressCookiesCutter" across your projects, you ensure consistency in your testing environment and practices. This makes it easier for team members to collaborate and understand each other's code.

3. Best practices: "CypressCookiesCutter" often includes best practices for testing, such as folder structures, naming conventions, plugins, reporting and configuration settings. This helps you write more maintainable and efficient tests.

4. Extensibility: While "CypressCookiesCutter" provides a solid foundation, they are also highly customizable. You can easily extend and modify the "CypressCookiesCutter" to suit your specific requirements and preferences.

5. Embedded Plugins: Writing tests is made easier by a variety of embedded plugins, such as Mochawesome reporting, Cypress Testrails Reporting, gitHub action, and many more.

6. Support: "CypressCookiesCutter" is maintained and receives regular updates and improvements. This means you can benefit from the collective knowledge and experience.

Leading Features 

Cypress Testrail Reporting

Cypress TestRail reporting enhances testing efficiency, visibility, and collaboration by seamlessly integrating test execution with test management and reporting capabilities. It empowers teams to make data-driven decisions, improve testing outcomes, and deliver high-quality software products. 

1. Provides a centralized location for storing and managing test results. This allows team members to easily access test data, including test runs, test cases, and test results, in one place.

2. Offers customizable reporting features that enable teams to generate reports tailored to their specific needs. 

3. Reporting feature enhances visibility and transparency across the testing process. Stakeholders can track test progress, identify bottlenecks, and monitor quality metrics in real-time, fostering collaboration and accountability within the team.

4. These reports provide valuable insights that facilitate data-driven decision-making. Teams can use reports to identify areas for improvement, prioritize testing efforts, and make informed decisions about release readiness.

5. "CypressCookiesCutter" integrated with gitHub action (CI/CD) pipeline, Two cron tasks are automatically started: one runs every time a push is made to gitHub, and the other runs every day at 4:00 a.m. These triggers are used to make sure the system is operating properly following a new code push.

6. Every time you run a test via the CI/CD pipeline or in Cypress headless mode, a new test will be generated. As you can see, the Cypress test information is displayed on the screen along with a timestamp and all the details pertaining to the testrun.

Cypress File Upload

Cypress itself doesn't natively support file uploads because it's designed to interact with the browser in a way that mimics how a user interacts with a web page. File uploads are typically restricted due to security reasons, and automating them using Cypress directly isn't straightforward.

However, you can achieve file uploads or drag & drop in Cypress by using "CypressCookiesCutter", it allows you to upload files using custom commands in your Cypress tests.

Here's how you can use cypress-file-upload tests:

Cypress-XPath

1. XPath allows you to select elements on a web page based on complex criteria such as attributes, text content, position in the DOM tree, and more. This flexibility makes it easier to locate elements, especially when they don't have easily identifiable CSS selectors.

2. XPath provides powerful tools for navigating the DOM tree, allowing you to traverse up, down, and across the hierarchy of elements. This is useful for scenarios where elements are nested or when you need to find elements relative to each other.

3. XPath expressions can target elements with high precision, enabling you to select specific elements even in large and complex web pages. 

4. XPath is supported by all major web browsers, making it a reliable choice for writing tests that need to run across different browser environments. This ensures consistency in element selection and test behavior across browsers.

5. XPath allows you to match elements based on a wide range of attributes and their values, including custom attributes that may not have corresponding CSS selectors. This makes it possible to target elements based on dynamic or unique properties.

6. XPath provides capabilities for selecting elements based on their text content, making it easier to identify elements that don't have distinctive IDs or classes but have specific text labels.

Here’s how you can use cypress XPath in your tests:

Mochawesome Reports

1. Generates detailed HTML reports that provide comprehensive insights into test execution. These reports include information such as test results (pass/fail), execution time, error messages, and stack traces, making it easy to diagnose issues and track test status.

2. Often include visual representations, such as charts and graphs, that offer a quick overview of test results. Visual representations make it easier for stakeholders to understand the testing progress and identify trends at a glance.

3. Allows you to customize the appearance and content of test reports according to your preferences and requirements. You can customize report titles, headers, footers, and styling to align with your organization's branding or reporting standards.

4. Integrated seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines, allowing teams to automate test execution and report generation. Integration with CI/CD tools ensures that test results are available in real-time and helps streamline the software delivery process.

5. Reports serve as a communication tool for sharing test results with stakeholders, including developers, testers, product owners, and managers. Clear and concise reports facilitate collaboration by providing a common understanding of test outcomes and priorities.

6. Offer various features for analyzing test data, such as filtering, sorting, and search capabilities. These features enable teams to drill down into specific test results, identify failed tests, and prioritize issues for resolution effectively.

7. "CypressCookiesCutter" provides various options to customize your HTML report according to your preferences, you'll be able to get HTML reports in the reports folder.

Here’s how reports are looks like:

Verify Download

Verify download plugin makes a difference to confirm downloaded records, no matter what is the extension of the file. By using these variations of the cy.verifyDownload command with different options, you can effectively confirm and validate downloaded records regardless of the file extension or partial filename.

Here’s how you can use cypress verify download in your tests:

CI/CD with GitHub Actions

1. GitHub Actions enables you to set up continuous integration (CI) pipelines for your Cypress tests directly within your GitHub repository. With CI, you can automatically trigger test runs whenever new code is pushed or a pull request is created, ensuring that changes are tested promptly.

2. Cypress tests can be automated as part of your GitHub Actions workflow, allowing you to run end-to-end tests against your web application automatically. This helps catch bugs early in the development process and ensures that new changes don't introduce regressions.

3. GitHub Actions supports parallel test execution, allowing you to run Cypress tests concurrently across multiple jobs or runners. Parallel execution helps reduce overall test execution time, enabling faster feedback cycles and increased developer productivity.

4. GitHub Actions allows you to define custom workflows tailored to your specific testing requirements. You can configure different jobs, steps, and triggers to orchestrate complex testing scenarios, such as running tests against different browser environments or deployment stages.

5. GitHub Actions seamlessly integrates with pull requests, enabling you to run Cypress tests automatically when a pull request is opened or updated. This provides early feedback to developers and helps ensure that proposed changes meet quality standards before merging.

6. GitHub Actions allows you to upload test artifacts and reports directly to your GitHub repository or external storage providers. You can publish Cypress test reports, screenshots, videos, and other artifacts as part of your workflow, making them accessible for review and analysis.

7. GitHub Actions scales with your testing needs, offering generous free usage quotas and flexible pricing options for additional capacity. Whether you're running a small project or managing enterprise-scale test suites, GitHub Actions provides a scalable and cost-effective solution for automated testing.

8. Once you configure "CypressCookiesCutter", you do not need to do anything special. Your .github/main.yml already contains configuration for cypress run in every push and also daily at 4:00 am, later on you can change it according to your process.

Here’s .github/main.yml file looks like

WailUntil Plugin

Cypress Wait Until plugin enhances the robustness, reliability, and efficiency of your Cypress tests by providing a convenient way to handle asynchronous operations and dynamic content. By waiting until the application reaches the desired state before proceeding with test steps, you can build more resilient and accurate test suites that deliver reliable results.

Here is the usage of this plugin in it block.

General Actions

There are numerous predefined action's (e.g. input, Api request, drag & drop) accessible, by utilizing these action's your code will be rapid and consistent.

Mobile/ Map Commands

The Mobile Command Cypress plugin offers several benefits, working with Cypress to automate testing of mobile web applications. Here are some key advantages. By using “CypressCookiesCutter” to make it easier there is no need to set up anything. 

1. Provides specialized commands and utilities tailored for mobile testing, allowing you to simulate touch gestures, screen rotations, and other mobile-specific interactions easily within your Cypress tests.

2. Helps ensure that your application works seamlessly across various devices and screen sizes, leading to more comprehensive test coverage.

3. Integrates smoothly with Cypress, leveraging its intuitive syntax and powerful features. This makes it easier for testers to write and maintain mobile tests without needing to learn a new framework or tool.

4. By automating mobile tests with Cypress, you can quickly identify and address issues, leading to a faster feedback loop. This is particularly beneficial in agile development environments where quick iterations and frequent releases are common.

Here is the usage of this plugin in it block.

How to Use Guide

Using "CypressCookiesCutter" is straightforward. Here's a general guide to get started:

1. Prerequisites: Node.js must be installed before installing Cypress. NodeJS is a runtime environment that helps to create server-side JavaScript applications.You can download from this link Download Node

2. Clone the repository: Clone its repository to your local machine using Git.

Repository URL: npx git@github.com:Ignicube/CypressCookieCutter.git my-cypress

1. Install dependencies: Navigate to the cloned directory and install the necessary dependencies using npm or yarn.

Navigate to cloned directory

cd my-cypress

Will install all dependencies

npm install

1. Customize configuration: Cypress configuration file to suit your project settings.

npm run add-project

This command will prompt you for your

• What is the baseUrl for this project? e.g. (www.mydomain.com)

• Do you want to configure TestRail? (y/N) yes will create TestRail configuration

• Do you want to integrate github action? (y/N) yes will create gitHub configuration

Setup almost Done!

1. Write tests: With the "CypressCookiesCutter" set up, you can start writing tests for your application. Refer to the documentation and examples provided with the "CypressCookiesCutter" for guidance.

2. Run tests: Execute your tests using the Cypress Test Runner or the command line interface (CLI). Analyze the test results and make any necessary adjustments to your code.

Conclusion

An easy method to get started with Cypress testing is with "CypressCookiesCutter". Cypress developers can easily write dependable and effective tests with "CypressCookiesCutter" pre-configured setup, community support, and best practices. For your next testing project, whether you're an experienced cypress user or just getting started, think about utilizing a "CypressCookiesCutter" to optimize your workflow and guarantee the caliber of your applications. Happy testing!

Click here for installation & documentation.