Use 'exports' test syntax

Overview

Nightwatch default interface for writing tests has been the exports syntax, which makes it very easy to write end-to-end tests.

While this format is slightly easier to understand and work with, it is also more limited than the BDD describe() interface. Due to the widespread usage of describe() as a test format and compatibility with tools like Mocha, we recommend using the BDD describe(), however exports will also continue to work just fine.

Example

The following basic test suite example opens the search engine Ecosia.org, searches for the term nightwatch, and then verifies if the term first result is the Nightwatch.js website.

tests/sampleTest.js
module.exports = {
  'Demo test ecosia.org' : function(browser) {
    browser
      .url('https://www.ecosia.org/')
      .waitForElementVisible('body')
      .assert.titleContains('Ecosia')
      .assert.visible('input[type=search]')
      .setValue('input[type=search]', 'nightwatch')
      .assert.visible('button[type=submit]')
      .click('button[type=submit]')
      .assert.containsText('.mainline-results', 'Nightwatch.js')
      .end();
  }
};

You can also include multiple steps in a test as follows:

tests/sampleTest.js 
module.exports = {
  'step one: navigate to ecosia.org': function(browser) {
    browser
      .url('https://www.ecosia.org')
      .waitForElementVisible('body')
      .assert.titleContains('Ecosia')
      .assert.visible('input[type=search]')
      .setValue('input[type=search]', 'nightwatch')
      .assert.visible('button[type=submit]');
  },
  

  'step two: click submit' : function (browser) {
    browser
      .click('button[type=submit]')
      .assert.containsText('.mainline-results', 'Nightwatch.js')
      .end();
  }
};

Using ES Modules (ESM)

If using ES Modules in your project, you'll need to write your tests using the below format:

tests/sampleTest.js
exports default {
  'Demo test ecosia.org' : function(browser) {
    browser
      .url('https://www.ecosia.org/')
      .waitForElementVisible('body')
      .assert.titleContains('Ecosia')
      .assert.visible('input[type=search]')
      .setValue('input[type=search]', 'nightwatch')
      .assert.visible('button[type=submit]')
      .click('button[type=submit]')
      .assert.containsText('.mainline-results', 'Nightwatch.js')
      .end();
  }
};

You'll also need to use nightwatch.conf.cjs config file.

We've put together a complete Github ESM template repo with several examples which we're periodically updating, including a Github Actions workflow for you to get started with.

nightwatch-boilerplate-esm on Github

Test tags

You can also selectively target tests to run based on tags, such that a test may belong to multiple tags. For example, you might have a login test that belongs to a login suite as well as a sanity suite.

The tagging can be accomplished by adding the @tags property to a test module:

tests/sampleTest.js 
module.exports = {
  '@tags': ['login', 'sanity'],
  'demo login test': function (browser) {
     // test code
  }
};

To select which tags to run, use the --tag command line flag:

nightwatch --tag login

Specify multiple tags as: 
nightwatch --tag login --tag something_else

To skip running tests with a specific tag, use the `--skiptags` flag: 
nightwatch --skiptags login

Or to skip multiple tags, add each tag you want to skip as comma-separated: 
nightwatch --skiptags login,something_else

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