Cypress Tips January 2023
Hello there, Happy New Year 2023 🎉 I wish everyone to always have their tests passing to the point that you stop following and needing my advice 😉
Cypress vs Playwright
Recently I have made a presentation comparing Cypress and Playwright test runners. The architecture of the two runners is very different, as I wrote previously in https://glebbahmutov.com/blog/cypress-vs-other-test-runners/. PW runs the tests in Node, controlling the browser via Chrome Debugger Protocol. Cypress runs the tests in the browser, and can also use CDP to send privileged commands. I personally love the amount of info Cypress gives me during the test run, and the ability to access the application objects and methods. Watch the recording of the talk below or on YouTube. The slides are at https://slides.com/bahmutov/the-debate-cy-and-pw.
Speaking of end-to-end testing and different tools: I have participated in a panel “Let the engineers speak” hosted by Applitools. Find the transcript and the video links here.
Conference and Workshop
There is only one conference I come back to every year: ConFoo.CA in Montreal, Canada. This year it will be on February 22-24, and I will speak there about Cypress component testing and the new Node.js built-in test runner (two different presentations). I will also do an in-person full-day Cypress workshop “End to end testing with Cypress“, sign up today. Finally, I will speak there at the “Software Crafters Montréal“ meetup on February 21st, giving my view of the current state of JavaScript testing. Thank you, Nicolas Carlo, for inviting me!
Course updates
My two paid Cypress courses have grown a lot. The “Network Testing Exercises” course has just crossed 100 lessons, and the “Cypress Plugins” course is approaching the 100 lessons mark. It is a lot of content, and the students who purchased the courses can suggest new lesson topics.
A Special Surprise
I believe end-to-end tests should run quickly. Splitting the tests to run in parallel across multiple CI machines is the best way to achieve this. I have just released a plugin cypress-split that lets you run all your Cypress specs in parallel without any external service - meaning:
You can quickly run your Cypress tests FOR FREE
There are GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and GitLab CI examples, and it should work on pretty much any CI system. Try it out and let me know what you think, ok?