Define and use test environments

Overview

The environments are located under the "test_settings" dictionary in the configuration file. A default environment is always required from which the other environments inherit the settings. You can overwrite any test setting for each environment as needed.

In this guide we're going to create a new test environment called "chrome-local" which we'll be using to run tests against the Google Chrome browser.

Create a new test project

First, let's create a new empty project and install Nightwatch inside it:

mkdir ./test-project && cd ./test-project

Install nightwatch and chromedriver from NPM (chromedriver is the W3C WebDriver implementation for running tests in the Google Chrome browser):

npm i nightwatch chromedriver

Create an empty file named nightwatch.conf.js

nano nightwatch.conf.js

and paste the following:

nightwatch.conf.js 
module.exports = {
  src_folders: ['tests'],
  

  test_settings: {
    default: {
      launch_url: 'https://home.cern',
      webdriver: {
        start_process: true,
        server_path: ''
      }
    }
  }
}

Test environments are referenced using the --env cli argument. Since we only have a default environment defined, attempting to reference the chrome-local environment will produce an error:

npx nightwatch --env chrome-local
~/workspace/test-project % npx nightwatch --env chrome-local
 
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                  │
│    Error: Invalid testing environment specified: chrome-local.   │
│                                                                  │
│     Available environments are:                                  │
│     [ 'default' ]                                                │
│                                                                  │
│                                                                  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Define a new "chrome-local" environment

Now, open the nightwatch.conf.js file again and add the chrome-local object below the default one:

nightwatch.conf.js 
module.exports = {
  src_folders: ['tests'],
  

  test_settings: {
    default: {
      launch_url: 'https://home.cern',
      webdriver: {
        start_process: true,
        server_path: ''
      }
    },
    'chrome-local': {
      desiredCapabilities: {
        browserName: 'chrome'
      }
    }
  }
}

Run a sample test against the "chrome-local" environment

Then add a sample test inside the tests folder:

mkdir tests && nano ./tests/sample-nightwatch-test.js
tests/sample-nightwatch-test.js 
describe('sample nightwatch test', function() {
  it('opens the browser and checks for input', function(browser) {
    browser
      .init()
      .assert.titleEquals('Home | CERN')
      .end();
  });
})

Run the sample and pass the --env chrome-local argument:

npx nightwatch --env chrome-local

The output will look a bit like this:

[sample nightwatch test] Test Suite
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ℹ Connected to ChromeDriver on port 9515 (844ms).
  Using: chrome (101.0.4951.64) on MAC OS X.


  Running opens the browser and checks for input:
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ℹ Loaded url https://home.cern in 5531ms
  ✔ Testing if the page title equals 'Home | CERN' (6ms)

OK. 1 assertions passed. (5.604s)

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