Nightwatch.js

Create a folder and install night watch

mkdir nightwatch-frontend; npm install nightwatch -g --dev-save

Select WebDriver Service

So you have an option to what browser and driver you want to use for testing, there’s Firefox(GekoDriver), Chrome(ChromeDriver), Edge(Microsoft WebDriver), Safari(SafariDriver). I always use Chrome for development, so let’s install ChromeDriver.

Chrome Driver

npm install chromedriver --save-dev

nightwatch.json

Nightwatch expects to have nightwatch.json configuration file in your root directory and paste this code inside.

{
  "src_folders" : ["tests"],

  "webdriver" : {
    "start_process": true,
    "server_path": "node_modules/.bin/chromedriver",
    "port": 9515
  },

  "test_settings" : {
    "default" : {
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "chrome"
      }
    }
  }
}

Settings for different environment

This is really convenient and you don’t need to change URL every environment. You can set URL for local development and different URL for testing and production.

{
  ...
  "test_settings" : {
    "default" : {
      "launch_url" : "http://localhost",
      "globals" : {
        "myGlobalVar" : "some value",
        "otherGlobal" : "some other value"
      }
    },

    "integration" : {
      "launch_url" : "http://staging.host",
      "globals" : {
        "myGlobalVar" : "other value"
      }
    }
  }
}

nightwatch --env integration

Test Group

tests/
  ├── logingroup
  |   ├── login_test.js
  |   └── otherlogin_test.js
  ├── addressbook
  |   ├── addressbook_test.js
  |   └── contact_test.js
  ├── chat
  |   ├── chatwindow_test.js
  |   ├── chatmessage_test.js
  |   └── otherchat_test.js
  └── smoketests
      ├── smoke_test.js
      └── othersmoke_test.js

To run smoke tests:

nightwatch --group smoketests

To skip smoke tests:

nightwatch --skipgroup smoketests

Skipping multiple groups

nightwatch -skipgroup addessbook,chat

You can use tags as well but were not covering it here.

Lets write some basic test

Inside your tests folder create file first-test.js and paste the code sample and run nightwatch.

module.exports = {
  'Demo test Google' : function (browser) {
    browser.url('https://www.google.com');
    browser.expect.element('#hplogo').to.be.present; 
    browser
      .waitForElementVisible('body')
      .setValue('input[type=text]', 'nightwatch')
      .waitForElementVisible('input[name=btnK]')
      .click('input[name=btnK]')
      .pause(1000)
      .assert.containsText('#main', 'Night Watch');
    browser.end();
  }
}

nightwatch --env default

Chrome browser will open and simulate the test.

I hope this helps you setup nightwatch basic testing. Chow!!!