Behavior Testing

Overview

To help ensure that the core services of Workshop.codes continue to behave as expected for the end-user, we employ behavior testing via Cucumber utilizing Capybara to simulate user input. The default RackTest driver is used for non-JavaScript features due to its speed, with Selenium driving Firefox for JavaScript-reliant features.

Local Setup

In the current configuration, a Firefox installation supporting the most recent version of Geckodriver is required. On Windows and Mac, the latest stable release of the standard Firefox browser should suffice.

However, on Debian-based Linux distros, it should be noted that Firefox may, by default, be a Snap package. A Snap-packaged Firefox will not work with the current Geckodriver setup, as Snap Firefox lacks the ability to read the /tmp directory where Geckodriver places the configuration files to launch Firefox. Please search for and follow instructions on how to install a non-Snap-packaged version of Firefox for your system, or set the environment variable TMPDIR (e.g. TMPDIR=$HOME/tmp rake cucumber) to a directory that Snap packages are allowed to access when running the tests.

File structure

• features/ - Root folder for all Cucumber feature tests
  • *.feature - Behavior outline files
  • support/ - Scaffolding and other setup files
  • step_definitions - Domain-specific language definitions written in Capybara. See the Cucumber docs for more information on writing step definitions

Running the feature tests

If using Rake, run

rake cucumber

Otherwise, run

bundle exec cucumber

Cucumber will automatically find all .feature files under the features/ directory and execute them.

Running a specific test

To run a specific feature test, run

[SEE ABOVE] cucumber features/[name].feature

Flags

Certain flags may be specified to make debugging failures easier.

Flags are set by setting the environment variable to the desired value. For example,

SEED=1234 bundle exec cucumber

All flags are listed below.

Flag name	Description	Possible Values
SEED	Sets the Kernel.srand seed to the specified value before every scenario. Useful for debugging scenarios which depend on random values.	[number]
LAUNCHY	Saves and attempts to open a snapshot after every step. Will probably fail if RackTest is being used instead of Selenium.	1 to enable, 0 to explicitly disable
DEBUGGER	Opens a Pry session upon failure.	1 to enable, 0 to explicitly disable
STEP	Halts execution after every step until a character is input to STDIN.	1 to enable, 0 to explicitly disable
PHOTO_MODE	Saves a screenshot after every step. Will probably fail if RackTest is being used instead of Selenium.	1 to enable, 0 to explicitly disable